[News] Haiti 2010: An Unwelcome Katrina Redux
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Mon Jan 18 18:59:54 EST 2010
From Cynthia McKinney: An Unwelcome Katrina Redux
President Obama's response to the tragedy in
Haiti has been robust in military deployment and
puny in what the Haitians need most: food; first
responders and their specialized equipment;
doctors and medical facilities and equipment; and
engineers, heavy equipment, and heavy
movers. Sadly, President Obama is dispatching
Presidents Bush and Clinton, and thousands of
Marines and U.S. soldiers. By contrast, Cuba has
over 400 doctors on the ground and is sending in
more; Cubans, Argentinians, Icelanders,
Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, and many others are
already on the ground working--saving lives and
treating the injured. Senegal has offered land
to Haitians willing to relocate to Africa.
The United States, on the day after the tragedy
struck, confirmed that an entire Marine
Expeditionary Force was being considered "to help
restore order," when the "disorder" had been
caused by an earthquake striking Haiti; not since
1751, 1770, 1842, 1860, and 1887 had Haiti
experienced an earthquake. But, I remember the
bogus reports of chaos and violence the led to
the deployment of military assets, including
Blackwater, in New Orleans in the aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina. One Katrina survivor noted
that the people needed food and shelter and the
U.S. government sent men with guns. Much to my
disquiet, it seems, here we go again. From the
very beginning, U.S. assistance to Haiti has
looked to me more like an invasion than a humanitarian relief operation.
On Day Two of the tragedy, a C-130 plane with a
military assessment team landed in Haiti, with
the rest of the team expected to land soon
thereafter. The stated purpose of this team was
to determine what military resources were needed.
An Air Force special operations team was also
expected to land to provide air traffic
control. Now, the reports are that the U.S. is
not allowing assistance in, shades of Hurricane Katrina, all over again.
On President Obama's orders military aircraft
"flew over the island, mapping the
destruction." So, the first U.S. contribution to
the humanitarian relief needed in Haiti were
reconnaissance drones whose staffing are more
accustomed to looking for hidden weapon sites and
surface-to-air missile batteries than wrecked
infrastructure. The scope of the U.S. response
soon became clear: aircraft carrer, Marine
transport ship, four C-140 airlifts, and
evacuations to Guantanamo. By the end of Day
Two, according to the Washington Post report, the
United States had evacuated to Guantanamo Bay
about eight [8] severely injured patients, in
addition to U.S. Embassy staffers, who had been
"designated as priorities by the U.S. Ambassador and his staff."
On Day Three we learned that other U.S. ships,
including destroyers, were moving toward
Haiti. Interestingly, the Washington Post
reported that the standing task force that
coordinates the U.S. response to mass migration
events from Cuba or Haiti was monitoring events,
but had not yet ramped up its operations. That
tidbit was interesting in and of itself, that
those two countries are attended to by a standing
task force, but the treatment of their nationals
is vastly different, with Cubans being awarded
immediate acceptance from the U.S. government,
and by contrast, internment for Haitian nationals.
U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral James Watson IV
reassured Americans, "Our focus right now is to
prevent that, and we are going to work with the
Defense Department, the State Department, FEMA
and all the agencies of the federal government to
minimize the risk of Haitians who want to flee
their country," Watson said. "We want to provide
them those releif supplies so they can live in Haiti."
By the end of Day Four, the U.S. reportedly had
evacuated over 800 U.S. nationals.
For those of us who have been following events in
Haiti before the tragic earthquake, it is worth
noting that several items have caused deep concern:
1. the continued exile of Haiti's
democratically-elected and well-loved, yet
twice-removed former priest, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide;
2. the unexplained continued occupation of the
country by United Nations troops who have killed
innocent Haitians and are hardly there for
"security" (I've personally seen them on the
roads that only lead to Haiti's
sparsely-populated areas teeming with beautiful beaches);
3. U.S. construction of its fifth-largest
embassy in the world in Port-au-Prince, Haiti;
4. mining and port licenses and contracts,
including the privatization of Haiti's deep water
ports, because certain off-shore oil and
transshipment arrangements would not be possible
inside the U.S. for environmental and other considerations; and
5. Extensive foreign NGO presence in Haiti that
could be rendered unnecessary if, instead,
appropriate U.S. and other government policy
allowed the Haitian people some modicum of
political and economic self-determination.
Therefore, we note here the writings of Ms.
Marguerite Laurent, whom I met in her capacity as
attorney for ousted President of Haiti
Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Ms. Laurent reminds us
of Haiti's offshore oil and other mineral riches
and recent revivial of an old idea to use Haiti
and an oil refinery to be built there as
a transshipment terminal for U.S.
supertankers. Ms. Laurent, also known as Ezili
Danto of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN), writes:
"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."
Unfortunately, before the tragedy struck, and
despite pleading to the Administration by Haiti
activists inside the United States, President
Obama failed to stop the deportation of Haitians
inside the United States and failed to grant TPS,
temporary protected status, to Haitians inside
the U.S. in peril of being deported due to visa
expirations. That was corrected on Day Three of
Haiti's earthquake tragedy with the January 15,
2010 announcement that Haiti would join Honduras,
Nicaragua, Somalia, El Salvador, and Sudan as a
country granted TPS by the Secretary of Homeland Security.
President Obama's appointment of President Bush
to the Haiti relief effort is a swift left jab to
the face, in my opinion. After President Bush's
performance in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina
and the fact that still today, Hurricane Katrina
survivors who want to return still have not been
provided a way back home, the appointment might
augur well for fundraising activities, but I
doubt that it bodes well for the Haitian
people. Afterall, the coup against and the
kidnapping of President Aristide occurred under the watch of a Bush Presidency.
Finally, those with an appreciation of French
literature know that among France's most beloved
authors are Alexandre Dumas, son of a Haitian
slave, and Victor Hugo who wrote: "Haiti est une
lumiere." [Haiti is a light.] Indeed, Haiti for
millions is a light: light into the methodology
and evil of slavery; light into a successful
slave rebellion, light into nationhood and
notions of liberty, the rights of man, and of
human dignity. Haiti is a light. And an example
that makes the enemies of black liberation
tremble. It is precisely because of Haiti's
light into the evil genius of some individuals
who wield power over others and man's ability,
through unity and purpose, to overcome that evil,
that some segments of the world have been at war
with Haiti ever since 1804, the year of Haiti's creation as a Republic.
I'm not surprised at "Reverend" Pat Robertson's
racist vitriol. Robertson's comments mirror,
exactly, statements made by Napoleon's Cabinet
when the Haitians defeated them. But in 2010,
Robertson's statements reveal much
more: Haitians are not the only ones who know
their importance to the struggle against hatred,
imperialism, and European domination.
This pesky, persistent, stubbornly non-Western,
proudly African people of this piece of land that
we call Haiti know their history and they know
that they militarily defeated the ruling world
empire of the day, Napoleon's France, and the
global elite at that time who supported
him. They know that they defeated the armies of England and Spain.
Haitians know that they used their status as a
free state to help liberate Latin Americans from
Spain, by funding and fighting alongside Simon
Bolivar; their example inspired their
still-enslaved African brothers and sisters on
the American mainland; and before Haitians were
even free, they fought against the British inside
the U.S. during its war of independence and won a
decisive battle in Savannah, Georgia, where I
have visited the statue commemorating that victory.
Haitians know that France imposed reparations on
them for being free, and Haiti paid them in full,
but that President Aristide called for France to
give that money back ($21 billion in 2003 dollars).
Haitians know that their "brother,"
then-Secretary of State Colin Powell lied to the
world upon the kidnapping and second ouster of
their President. (Sadly, it wouldn't be the last
time that Secretary of State Colin Powell would
lie to the world.) Haitians know, all-too-well,
that high-ranking blacks in the United States are
capable of helping them and of betraying them.
Haitians know, too, that the United States has
installed its political proxies and even its own
soldiers onto Haitian soil when the U.S. felt it
was necessary. All in an effort to control the
indomitable Haitian spirit that directs
much-needed light to the rest of the oppressed world.
While the tears of the people of Haiti swell in
my own eyes, and I remember their tremendous
capacity for love, my broken heart and wet eyes
don't dampen my ability to understand the grave
danger that now faces my friends in Haiti.
I shudder to think that the "rollback" policies
believed in by some foreign policy advisors to
President Obama could use a prolonged U.S.
military presence in Haiti as a springboard for
rollback of areas in Latin America that have
liberated themselves from U.S. neo-colonial
domination. I would hate to think that this
would even be attempted under the Presidency of
Barack Obama. All of us must have our eyes wide
open on Haiti and other parts of the world now
dripping in blood as a result of the relentless
onward march of the U.S. military machine.
So, on this remembrance of the birth of Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., I note that it was the
U.S. government's own illegal Operation Lantern
Spike that snuffed out the promise and light of
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Every plane of
humanitarian assistance that is turned away by
the U.S. military (so far from CARICOM, the
Caribbean Community, Médecins Sans Frontieres,
Brazil, France, Italy, and even the U.S. Red
Cross)--as was done in the wake of Hurricane
Katrina--and the expected arrival on this very
day of up to 10,000 U.S. troops, are lasting
reminders of the existential threat that now
looms over the valiant, proud people and the Republic of Haiti.
From: HQ <hq2600 at gmail.com>
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
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