URGENT NEWS: 10,000 US Troops to Haiti

[MilitantWorker]

Source: Al Jazeera

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/01/2010115171416848545.html


The United States also plans to send 10,000 US troops to the earthquake-ravaged country to help distribute aid and prevent potential rioting among survivors, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

Admiral Mike Mullen said the total US presence in and around the beleaguered country could rise beyond that figure as his military officers determine how much assistance may be needed in the days ahead.
This is shameful. The ruling class is a shame to humanity. We all know that American troops aren't there to help distribute the aid. Watch the muted segments of footage they play on the news. Watch what is going on carefully. People are being arrested during this catastrophe! And why? Because they want to eat!

Am I surprised we're (US citizens) not hearing about this? Not even a headline! :sneaky:

REMEMBER KIDDIES, IF YOU ARE STARVING, AND YOUR FAMILY DEAD OR MISSING, THE BOURGEOISIE SAY, "NO FOOD FOR YOU!!! YOU MUST PAY!!!"

http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:wN8aLSI3jJN1VM%3Ahttp://www.wehaitians.com/haitian_police.jpghttp://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:HeLZFhu5NInqxM:http://latinamericanmusings.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/us-solider-in-haiti-2004.jpghttp://english.aljazeera.net/mritems/Images//2010/1/15/2010115184352216734_3.jpg

[Yazman]

Given that there are apparently very, very high rates of crime, and that there have been reports of machete squads appearing in Haiti once again, I think a certain degree of protection might be needed for aid workers.

You should also remember that the transportation ability of the US military is pretty incredible. The fact that they've sent a few C-130s shows that they are transporting some sort of goods en masse.

[MilitantWorker]

Why do you post on revolutionaryleft.com?

How about some protection for the aid workers?!? Who is attacking aid workers?!?

How about some protection for the working class?! How about some protection from American Imperialism?! How about protection from the terror of the ruling class? which made no preparations to protect its people from a disaster like this?

The American military's transportation abilities are quite incredible???

Yo. Are you off your fucking nut? Know what is quite incredible? The fact that a catastrophe of this proportion is happening in the year 2010! The fact that a century ago, Haiti was one of the worlds leading exporters of rice and now they aren't even self-sufficient! And the fact that all you had to say about this was blah blah I'm a Bougie asshole blah blah blah?

[Comrade B]

People have the machetes for a reason. They want the food and they don't give a shit about the other starving people.
Haiti has a lot of crime. Organized gangs support themselves before all others, some people would be more than happy to exploit the situation and claim as much for themselves as possible.


Yo. Are you off your fucking nut? Know what is quite incredible? The fact that a catastrophe of this proportion is happening in the year 2010!
I agree with you on the second part, but don't see what this has to do with people being "off their nut"
The priority is helping people, don't make it into "US Imperialism". The people of Haiti would probably think you are a douche for saying so.


he fact that a century ago, Haiti was one of the worlds leading exporters of rice and now they aren't even self-sufficient!
What does that have to do with the US? Who profited from those exports? The proletariat of Haiti were just as poor.


And the fact that all you had to say about this was blah blah I'm a Bougie asshole blah blah blah?
What exactly did he say that made you so furious?

[FreeFocus]

I think the question is how long the troops will be in Haiti. Surely they are distributing some aid, the US has to do this in some capacity for propaganda purposes. But could this turn into a second American occupation of Haiti? It could, but I don't see it happening. Geopolitically, it would be quite useless. Haiti is already stuck in the orbit of capitalism, and is not in any condition to try to escape. Still, there could be some type of revolt that expresses the cries of the masses.

WSWS had a pretty good article up here (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jan2010/hait-j16.shtml):


The lack of adequate infrastructure in terms of airports, roads and port facilities to bring in supplies, together with the virtual absence of any government presence coordinating rescue operations are the result not just of Tuesday’s natural disaster. Nor are they—as US Defense Secretary Robert Gates described them Friday—merely “facts of life.”


Rather, they are a manifestation of the enforced backwardness to which Haiti has been condemned by the major banks and corporations represented by the US government and the international finance agencies. Their sole interest in Haiti has been a predatory one, based on the ability to make profits off of near-starvation wages. Together they have systematically undermined the Haitian government ever since the 1986 mass upheavals that brought an end to the three decades of US-backed dictatorship by the Duvaliers.


The president first elected in the wake of the dictatorship, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was overthrown in US-backed coups not once, but twice—in 1991 and 2004. Meanwhile, Washington and the lending agencies pushed through one round of privatizations after another, stripping the Haitian state of any real power or resources.


Even in the best of times, essential services in Haiti such as health care, housing, transportation, communications, electricity, water and sewerage are grossly inadequate and tenuous.


Rather than developing the country’s infrastructure or ameliorating its desperate poverty, Washington’s principal concerns have been maintaining order and preventing Haitians fleeing the oppressive conditions of their homeland from reaching US shores.Emphasis mine. It's more honest on behalf of the US if, after the disaster, Obama or Gates had come out and said, "To hell with Haiti." That's what the US has done since Haitian independence, and that's what it's still doing and will continue to do.

More from the article:


The article went on to warn that “criminal bands from poor neighborhoods like Cité Soleil and La Saline are almost certain to try to exploit the security void.” It quoted Roberto Perito, described as an expert on Haitian gangs at the Institute of Peace, a government-funded agency with close ties to US intelligence and the Pentagon, saying that the supposed threat is “surely why the US military deployment is adding a security component.”

Time added: “The US military has had its share of experience with Port-au-Prince’s gangs,” noting that they are often “political in nature,” coalescing, as Perito put it, “around charismatic and ruthless Robin Hood figures.”


There is every likelihood that the US military deployment will be turned against the people of Haiti in the suppression of mass unrest. Having occupied the country for 20 years in the first part of the 20th century and intervened twice more in 1994 and 2004, the US military is once again assuming control in what senior commanders say will be a long-term operation.

[Comrade B]

I don't really see any reason for US troops to stick around. Haiti is hardly a threat to US because there are no business interests, nor does there seem to be any radical anti-US/Western/Capitalist movement. If the US's fear is immigration, they would be much more effective at blocking entrance, rather than preventing exit.

[The Red Next Door]

I am against imperialism but where esle they are gonna get the money from? Hati can't rebuild the shit themselves because they do not have any natural resources like other countries do. So if they do not get the aid, they are jwf and sol.

[Rusty Shackleford]

where the hell did the us get 10000 troops?

[Comrade B]

I think I heard they were previously deployed in Iraq

[Rusty Shackleford]

hmm, i think 10000 troops could have been used to aid democracy in Honduras too. i guess it didnt have as much use for the US as this might. im not going to be so cold though. there is some assistance and mild benefits that a military presence brings but it is not very likely that it will be helpful for long. i'd rather the UN be there instead of the US, or any nation for that matter.

this is going to look like a less violent 1993 somalia but with hardcore capitalist overtones.

[Comrade B]

i'd rather the UN be there instead of the US, or any nation for that matter.
Totally agree on that one

The US didn't really have an interest in helping Honduras in any way other than symbolic. The new leadership could only mean better relations with the US bourgeois.

[Yazman]

How about some protection for the aid workers?!? Who is attacking aid workers?!?

It does happen. Israel targeted Red Cross vehicles in one of its recent incursions into Palestine and was under fierce criticism for it.

I'm not actually defending the US military, by the way. But I can actually sort of understand them being there in this particular instance.

The big problem here though is, with the operations and sovereignty of parts of Haiti being transferred to the US temporarily, I wouldn't be surprised if the US somehow managed to turn this into their advantage and establish a permanent military base in Haiti well after they're gone.

[Guerrilla22]

I'm sure the US military only has purely noble intentions. They ahve proven such after numerous other military incursions into other countries in the carribean/Latin America throughout the years.

[Yazman]

I'm sure the US military only has purely noble intentions. They ahve proven such after numerous other military incursions into other countries in the carribean/Latin America throughout the years.

I hope you're not implying about me what I think you're implying. One post with a slightly different opinion doesn't mean I am defending every single US military operation that has ever been made and that I am supportive of them as an organisation, or that I think they have noble intentions.

[FSL]

I don't really see any reason for US troops to stick around. Haiti is hardly a threat to US because there are no business interests, nor does there seem to be any radical anti-US/Western/Capitalist movement. If the US's fear is immigration, they would be much more effective at blocking entrance, rather than preventing exit.


That the country went through a coup, that UN soldiers are still on the island and that Aristide remains exiled to this very day would point somewhere else.

[Leo]

Article on our French site, will shortly be up in English:

Haiti earthquake: capitalist governments are all criminals!

Murderers. Capitalism, its states, its bourgeoisie, are nothing but murderers. Tens of thousands of people have just died because of this inhuman system.

Tuesday, at 16.53 local time, an earthquake of 7 on the Richter scale ravaged Haiti. The capital Port-au-Prince, an octopus like slum housing nearly two million people, was purely and simply razed to the ground. The toll is terrible. And it’s getting worse by the hour. Four days after the catastrophe, on Friday 15 January, the French Red Cross has already estimated 40-50,000 dead and “a huge number of grave injuries”. According to this charity, at least three million people have been directly affected by the earthquake . In a few seconds, 200,000 families lost their ‘houses’, often made out of rough bits and pieces. Large buildings also fell like a house of cards. Roads, already decrepit, the airport, the ancient railway tracks: nothing stood up to it.

The reason for this carnage is revolting. Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world. 75% of its inhabitants survive on less than two dollars a day and of them 56% on less than one dollar a day! On this side of a poverty-stricken island nothing at all has been done to face up to earthquakes. And yet, Haiti is a well-known earthquake zone. All those who claim today that this quake was of an exceptional and unforeseeable violence are lying. Professor Eric Calais, in a geology course delivered in Haiti in 2002, pointed out that the island was traversed by “fault-lines capable of producing quakes of a magnitude of between 7.5 and 8” . The political authorities in Haiti had been officially informed of this risk, as proved by this extract taken from the website of the Bureau of Mines and Energy (which is linked to the ministry of public works): “all of the last few centuries have been marked by at least one major earthquake in Hispaniola (the Spanish name for the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic - ed): the destruction of Porte au-Prince in 1751 and 1771; the destruction of Cap Haitien in 1842, the earthquakes of 1887 and 1904 in the north of the country with major damage to Porte-au-Prince and Cap Haitien, the earthquake of 1946 in the north east of the Dominican Republic accompanied by a tsunami in the region of Nagua. There have been major earthquakes in Haiti, there will therefore be major earthquakes in the future every few dozen or hundred years: this is scientifically evident” (our emphasis). And so, faced with something so scientifically evident, what measures have been taken? None! In March 2008 a group of geologists drew attention to the considerable risk of a major earthquake in two years time; and in May of the same year certain scientists even held a series of meetings on this question with the Haitian government . Neither the Haitian state, nor all the states which are now crying crocodile tears and calling for “international solidarity”, the US and France above all, have taken the slightest preventative measure to avoid this predictable drama. The buildings erected in this country are so fragile that they don’t even need an earthquake to collapse: “in 2008, a school in Pétonville collapsed for no geological reason, killing nearly 90 children” .

Now that it’s too late, Obama and Sarkozy can announce a “great international conference” for “reconstruction and development”; the Chinese, British, German or Spanish states can send all their food parcels and their NGOs. They are still criminals with blood on their hands.

If Haiti is so poor today, if its population is deprived of everything, if the infrastructure is non-existent, it’s because for more than 200 years the local bourgeoisie and the bigger Spanish, French and American bourgeoisies have confronted each other over the resources of this small island, over who controls it. Through its daily paper The Guardian the British bourgeoisie is even quite capable of pointing out the responsibility of its imperialist rivals: “The noble ‘international community’ which is currently scrambling to send its ‘humanitarian aid’ to Haiti is largely responsible for the extent of the suffering it now aims to reduce. 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 smouldering in resentment. The UN has subsequently maintained a large and enormously expensive stabilisation and pacification force in the country…..The international community has been effectively ruling Haiti since the 2004 coup. The same countries scrambling to send emergency help to Haiti now, however, have during the last five years consistently voted against any extension of the UN mission's mandate beyond its immediate military purpose. Proposals to divert some of this ‘investment’ towards poverty reduction or agrarian development have been blocked, in keeping with the long-term patterns that continue to shape the distribution of international ‘aid’”... And that’s only part of the story. The USA and France have been fighting for control of this island through coups, violence and armed militia that terrorise men women and children on a daily basis.

The media circus around ‘international solidarity’ is therefore unbearably repulsive. The different states are making all the publicity they can about ‘their’ NGOs. ‘their’ food parcels, showing the best pictures of the people ‘their’ aid workers have saved from the ruins. Even worse, while bodies pile up, France and America are involved in a ruthless war for influence. In the name of humanitarianism, they have sent in their military fleet to take control of operations under the pretext of the need for coordinating the operations.

As with every catastrophe, all the declarations about long term aid, all the promises about reconstruction and development, will amount to nothing. Over the past ten years, in the wake of earthquakes, there have been:
- 15,000 dead in Turkey, in 1999
- 14,000 dead in India, in 2001
- 26,200 dead in Iran in 2003
- 210,000 in Indonesia in 2004 (the under-water earthquake having given rise to a gigantic tsunami which claimed victims as far away as Africa)
- 88, 000 deaths in Pakistan, in 2005
- 70,000 dead in China, in 2008

Each time, the ‘international community’ has been suitably moved and sent in miserable amounts of aid, but never real investments aimed at bringing lasting improvements to the situation, by erecting anti-earthquake buildings for example. Humanitarian aid, real support for the victims, prevention, are not profitable activities for capitalism. When it exists, humanitarian aid is used as an ideological smokescreen to make people think that this system of exploitation can be human after all, if it’s not directly an alibi for justifying the dispatch of military forces and gaining influence in this or that region of the world.

A single fact reveals the bourgeois hypocrisy of the humanitarianism and international solidarity of the states: the French minister of immigration, Eric Besson, has just decreed the “temporary” suspension of deportations of illegal immigrants back to Haiti. That says it all.

The horror striking the population of Haiti can only engender tremendous feelings of sadness. The working class will, as after each hecatomb, react by responding to the various calls for financial aid. It will show once again that its heart beats for humanity, that solidarity has no frontiers.

But, above all, such a horror must feed its anger and its will to fight. The real responsibility for the 50,000 or more deaths in Haiti lies not with nature or fate but with capitalism and its states.

Pawel, 15 January 2010

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Leo that's a shamefully brazen article.

Yes, we know why Haiti is so impoverished. But now really isn't the time to try and stoke up peoples' revolutionary zeal in Haiti. As humanitarians, it must be our goal to simply save as many people as we can.

Of course, it is laughable to think that 10,000 US troops are there for completely innocent reasons. I imagine they are protecting US interests there, not protecting Haitian interests.

[Kléber]

i'd rather the UN be there instead of the US, or any nation for that matter.
The UN is already there, they installed the mafia government and have been keeping it in power.

[Saorsa]

Leo that's a shamefully brazen article.

Actually I think it's a brutally honest article.

[Guerrilla22]

I hope you're not implying about me what I think you're implying. One post with a slightly different opinion doesn't mean I am defending every single US military operation that has ever been made and that I am supportive of them as an organisation, or that I think they have noble intentions.

I wasn't refering to you, otherwise I would have quoted your post. I am simply rolling my eyes at the fact the US government's response to this of all things is to send infantry into Haiti when doctors, nurses and search and rescue teams are what is actually needed.

[Yazman]

Thank you for clearing that up, Guerrilla22, and yes I mostly agree with you. I think that in this case the military could be of use because, as I said, they have an ability to transport goods in a MUCH higher capacity than anybody else in the region, however the 10,000 troops is overkill.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a US military base established in Haiti at some point.

[Comrade B]

UN soldiers are still on the island and that Aristide remains exiled to this very day
Then why would they need to keep troops in Haiti?

[Rusty Shackleford]

The UN is already there, they installed the mafia government and have been keeping it in power.

i guess you cant even rely on a collection of bourgeois powers to do something good.

[The Vegan Marxist]

Why not just send in some U.S. troops that are within the medical field? They have been trained extensively through armed resistance, so they can help keep safety in Haiti, while they are medically doing their part as well in the aid distribution to those that are wounded.

[Tifosi]

The city of New Orleans come's to mind:rolleyes:

[Rusty Shackleford]

does anyone know what the 10000 troops will consist of?

im sure there wont be any armored brigades or anything of that sort. but im wondering how much of it will be the Army Corps of Engineers? if the ACoE is in there it might prevent capistalists form explioiting the situation because the ACoE is already doing the work.

[Comrade B]

Why not just send in some U.S. troops that are within the medical field? They have been trained extensively through armed resistance, so they can help keep safety in Haiti, while they are medically doing their part as well in the aid distribution to those that are wounded.
US places itself as priority, combat medics are not particularly common, I know one, their training is fucking ridiculous. The US would probably have to pull them from Iraq or Afghanistan. It would be lovely if they would pull them out to save people rather than kill them... but that isn't the American Way.

[MilitantWorker]

0F5TwEK24sA

[brigadista]

this is interesting

http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2010/01/us-security-companies-offer-services-haiti

[NecroCommie]

I was half-waiting for someone to point us to Naomi Klein and her shock doctorine theory. Don't get me wrong, she's dead on, but that was kinda expected. :lol:

[brigadista]

think she is going to be proved right here expected or not.... unfortunately

[GatesofLenin]

The city of New Orleans come's to mind:rolleyes:
Great comparison Red! Does seem like if there's oil, gold, diamonds to be had, aid comes quicker! Sick fact but capitalism cares for the mighty $$$$ first and all the rest a far second. Sick statistic so far: over $24 million raised for Haiti so far and over 90% of the donations are from people making less than $30000/year. Where are the rich bastards? Has Bill Gates donated anything yet? How about that loud mouth Oprah Winfrey? The poor of the world are the only ones that truly care for the poor of Haiti. It's a fact!

[the last donut of the night]

Leo that's a shamefully brazen article.

Yes, we know why Haiti is so impoverished. But now really isn't the time to try and stoke up peoples' revolutionary zeal in Haiti. As humanitarians, it must be our goal to simply save as many people as we can.

Laughable, this post.

'We' humanitarians?

Are you referring to the US or the UN? I think that you, as a leftist, should have enough knowledge to know that wherever American troops are employed, the shit hits the fan. It's happened for the last 200 years, dude, and due to that, I know that these 10,000 troops are not in Haiti to help out the people.

They're there to further assert American imperialist rule over this nation. They will stay there to further help big-business goals. This, my friend, is the shock doctrine.

So how can it be humanitarianism?

Doesn't the fact that a mere 100 million dollars, iirc, is being directed at humanitarian efforts make you a bit suspicious? Or how about the fact that these 100 million dollars ARE NOTHING compared to the billions going into Lockheed Martin's pockets, or the billions going to keep the Afghan people silent and choked?

We must not forget our politics even in these times of heightened tragedy and emotion. The same reasoning behind your post, which is to somehow forget our class-alliances because it somehow impedes 'humanitarian' aid, is the same that helped the Espionage Act kill dissent during WW1 (ie. going after us commies) and the PATRIOT Act attack dissent after 9/11.

We must not forget that the benefactors of this 'aid' are not the workers, but the fat cats in Washington.




Of course, it is laughable to think that 10,000 US troops are there for completely innocent reasons. I imagine they are protecting US interests there, not protecting Haitian interests.

You imagine?

You seriously have to read more about the history of Latin America/Caribbean then.

[cyu]

Excerpts from http://www.indymedia.ie/article/95531

http://www.indymedia.ie/cache/imagecache/local/attachments/jan2010/480_0___20_0_0_0_0_0_usmchaiti2004.jpg

The occupation is called the United Nations Stabilization Mission (MINUSTAH) and it is significant for involving the militaries and police from a wide range of South and Central American countries... This composition has attracted less international opposition... but in 2005, the then MINUSTAH force commander, Lieutenant-General Augusto Heleno Ribeiro Pereira testified at a congressional commission in Brazil that "we are under extreme pressure from the international community to use violence”, mentioning Canada, France, and the United States in particular as the source of that pressure.

The US peacekeepers declared war on neighborhoods where the social movements were active... A July 6th 2005 raid on the Cité Soleil shanty town probably saw at least 20 killed. 75% of the wounded who turned up at one clinic were women and children... A 2005 report from the Harvard Law Student Advocates for Human Rights claimed that the UN "effectively provided cover for the police to wage a campaign of terror in Port-au-Prince's slums"... An earlier November 2004 investigation by the University of Miami School of Law found that "summary executions are a police tactic."

[The Douche]

does anyone know what the 10000 troops will consist of?

im sure there wont be any armored brigades or anything of that sort. but im wondering how much of it will be the Army Corps of Engineers? if the ACoE is in there it might prevent capistalists form explioiting the situation because the ACoE is already doing the work.

My unit is sending volunteers, I was asked if I wanted to go.

I am in an Airborne Long Range Surveillance infantry unit.

The kind of troops sent to the area doesn't really act as a clear indicator of the intentions. Yes, I am in a specialized infantry unit, but are we gonna go there and scout on Haitians to provide intel for special operations units? Obviously not.

The troops will probably be protecting US/international interests on the island, and doing general crowd control/police type work.

(obviously the presence of the US military is a bad thing, for some reason whenever I post on military issues people seem to get the impression that I am in favor of US imperialism, I'm just trying to explain some things)

[Q]

Already posted in another thread (http://www.revleft.com/vb/time-drop-politics-t127023/index.html?p=1654137#post1654137), but this great antidote on why US (or any foreign) troops should get the fuck out of Haiti fits perfect here too:




Haiti – The State Apparatus Collapsed Too


When the 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti a little over a week ago, a lot more than buildings and infrastructure collapsed. While the presidential palace crumbled, so did the state infrastructure. In a country as desperately poor as Haiti, and with such revolutionary traditions, first and foremost in importance in this state infrastructure are the forces of repression. These forces – in the form of the police – disappeared entirely from the streets of Port-au-Prince after the earthquake. For US capitalism, this was a terrifying situation.

US “Asserting Authority”
The Obama administration had to act fast. In slightly over a week, it is expected that some 10,000 US troops will have arrived there. Airlifted in with them will be their trucks, fuel, rations, water, and arms. As the Wall St. Journal reported (1/15/10), “Hillary Clinton told Fox News that a chief aim of the US effort was to ‘assert authority’ and to ‘reinstate the government’ in Haiti.”

In this, the US regime is in full accord with the advice of the arch-conservative Heritage Foundation, which advised, “We should rapidly deploy sufficient US military and civilian forces to help Haitians restore order in the capital of Port-au-Prince and in surrounding areas.” They cannot say it openly, but what they mean is that the state authority, first and foremost the forces of repression, must be restored immediately.

This takes priority over providing food, water and medical supplies. Doctors Without Borders, for instance, has complained that five of its planes were refused landing permission at Port-au-Prince and had to divert to Santo Domingo. This included a plane with an entire portable hospital. Benoit Leduc of this doctors’ group said that “hundreds of lives” were lost as a result. Mexican authorities have complained that its planes, also carrying medical equipment and food, were refused landing rights. Venezuela and Cuba haven’t even bothered trying to send planes to Port-au-Prince, knowing that the US military would not allow them to land under any circumstances; they just sent their planes to Santo Domingo also.

US Media Distortions
Over the years, the US corporate-controlled mass media has pictured impoverished Haiti as being violent and nearly ungovernable. They have built up this racist image in order to obscure the extreme measures that imperialism took to repress the self-liberated former slaves of Haiti. These steps included the extortion of some $23 billion (in today’s dollars) by France and the near-20 year occupation of Haiti by US Marines (starting in 1915). Now, they are ratcheting up the propaganda, as images of chaotic and violent crowds fill the media.

Is the emphasis on landing troops and military equipment necessary?

Naturally, after this extended delay, some desperate people will resort to violence, but the overall situation is remarkably different. As al-Jazeera (www.english.aljazeera.net (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.english.aljazeera.net/)
) reports: “While there were reports of isolated incidents of violence, for the most part, there was an ‘organized calm’ in the capital.” Even US Lieutenant-General Ken Keen had to admit to al Jazeera that “The level of violence that we see now is below the pre-earthquake levels.” And the Wall St. Journal, written more to keep the heads of corporate America informed than for propaganda purposes, reported (1/19/10), “US officials have blamed security concerns for holding up providing relief. Yet a team of Cuban doctors were seen Monday treating hundreds of patients without a gun or soldier in sight.”

Dr. Evan Lyon of Partners in Health commented to DemocracyNow.org that
“There are no security issues…. I’m staying at a friend’s house in Port-au-Prince. We’re working… as volunteers…. 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.” By the end of this week, though, there will be plenty of US and UN soldiers on the streets, but clearly their presence is not needed to maintain the rescue efforts. They are there to reinforce the capitalist state authority.

The result is that Port-au-Prince is becoming like a fortress. Sebastien Walker reports to DemocracyNow that where “the United States has taken control(,) it looks more like the Green (militarized) Zone in Baghdad than a center for aid distribution.” A Haitian “man in the street” commented to DemocracyNow that, “These weapons they bring, they are instruments of death. We don’t want them. We don’t need them. We are a traumatized people. What we want from the international community is technical help—action, not words.”

US Capitalism Terrified
This is the unreported reality, and a terrifying one it was to US capitalism. Here you had a country with a long history of struggle. It was not so long ago (2005) that the US helped engineer a coup that ousted a popular leftist president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who is now in exile in South Africa. This president had launched a literacy program, funded the building of schools and medical facilities and sharply raised the minimum wage. This last was a real crime since under the leadership of ex-US president Bill Clinton and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, the strategy has been to develop Haiti as a source of ultra-cheap labor. Aristide also launched a campaign to recover the $23 billion that France had extorted from it back in 1825.

Even more dangerous was the threat of a Haitian working class mobilizing on its own. The partial example of the 1985 earthquake in Mexico City should be recalled. There, when the state forces failed utterly to provide help, neighborhood committees self-organized and performed their own rescue operations. These committees then became the basis of a community movement that opposed the right-wing national government. The difference with Haiti is that in Mexico the state apparatus did not collapse almost entirely; in Haiti it did. Therefore, in Haiti the danger to capitalism was even greater.

This does not mean that capitalism would have been overthrown overnight, but the danger of this developing over a fairly short time was real. And in any case, they had Aristide waiting in the wings. To have him return to Haiti would compound the problem US capitalism faces throughout Latin America, where a populist movement has put hostile regimes in power in a series of countries. On top of that, US capitalism’s most threatening rival, Chinese capitalism, is making increasing inroads in the region.

Naturally, capitalism cannot allow a state of continual chaos and utter breakdown such as exists in Haiti now. They need a certain amount of stability, a somewhat functioning infrastructure, plus a working class that is not absolutely starving. US capitalism would also be utterly discredited, both at home and abroad, if they stood by, New Orleans-style, and did nothing. Finally, there is the consideration of regimes such as those in Venezuela and Cuba further increasing their influence. Therefore, some rescue and aid measures have to be taken.

The Future
The situation in Haiti bears being closely watched. From afar, it is impossible to tell to what degree the working class is or will organize to assert its class interests in the immediate future. If they do so, clashes with the US and UN troops are likely. However, it must be realized that the US military command is in a risky situation. Many of their troops are black, meaning they will tend to have a sympathy with the Haitian people. Maybe even more important, the troops, including National Guards from Pennsylvania and Florida, are headed for or are already in Haiti. Especially these National Guard troops would be open to considering the needs of their class brothers and sisters in Haiti. A campaign of fraternization with these – as well as the UN troops – would go a long way towards undermining their intended role of repression. (It should be noted that it is extremely unlikely that the Obama administration intends any long-term military occupation of Haiti.)

Several large US unions are now mobilizing to send aid to Haiti. This is being done so far under the control of the established union officialdom. This establishment has a long history of acting as the labor face for the US State Department and even the CIA. They have no intention of breaking with this criminal tradition in this instance. However, in the United States, there are many thousands of Haitian members of these unions. Through these and other active members of the unions, independent teams of US workers could be sent to Haiti. They could be sent both to bring aid as well as to organize direct links between the Haitian workers’ movement and organizations and that in the United States.

In this way, the working class in both countries could start to move forward.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Quake: No Act of God (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1002298)

Millions around the world were appalled at the death and devastation in Haiti. James Turley puts the calamity into context

As readers will know, just before 5pm local time on January 12, a catastrophic earthquake struck Haiti. Its epicentre was very close to Léogâne, a well-populated town not far from the capital, Port-au-Prince.

The tremor is estimated at 7 on the seismic moment magnitude scale (which is similar to but more precise than the old Richter scale). Seismologists recorded no less than 33 aftershocks, themselves reaching about 5-6 on the scale. Soon, Haiti was descending into almost biblical chaos.

An earthquake this powerful would have caused significant infrastructural damage in a first-world metropolis, and probably some loss of life too. In Haiti, however, things are of a qualitatively different order. It is the poorest country in the western hemisphere; its buildings are not state-of-the-art, reinforced concrete constructions, but built on the cheap or - in the case of the many large and overpopulated slums, including the infamous Cité Soleil - on no budget at all. The hospitals are not well equipped, well maintained medical centres typical of the global ‘north’ - and in any case, all those in the capital collapsed during the quake. There is, needless to say, no equivalent to the American Federal Emergency Management Authority waiting to step in and re-establish control.

As such, the devastation is horrifying; it is a humanitarian disaster on a scale not seen at least since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed over 230,000 (triggered, of course, by another earthquake). Over 80% of the buildings in Léogâne were destroyed. The shaky infrastructure of the country has been shattered, and the relevant government agencies - however feeble their efforts could only have been in any event - now lie in ruins.

Amid the debris, what benefits of civilisation that had not already been sabotaged by a predatory global capitalism evaporated. Survivors had no choice but to sleep in the streets or otherwise exposed to the elements - only the open air is guaranteed not to fall on your head in the event of another aftershock. Medical care in the immediate aftermath reverted effectively back to the stone age; but a bigger problem than treating the 250,000-odd injured was presented by their less fortunate compatriots. The sheer volume of corpses - combined with damage to roads, communications and the rest - rendered disposal a logistical nightmare. Estimates as to the death toll start at 100,000 and go up to 500,000 or even higher: 5% of the total population. The government has confirmed, at time of writing, that 70,000 corpses have already been buried in mass graves, but they will be clearing the rubble for some time yet.

Mati Goldstein, the chief Israeli aid worker in the country, even found himself uttering the ‘H’ word - “Everywhere, the acrid smell of bodies hangs in the air. It’s just like the stories we are told of the holocaust - thousands of bodies everywhere. You have to understand that the situation is true madness and, the more time passes, there are more and more bodies, in numbers that cannot be grasped. It is beyond comprehension.”

Goldstein’s is one of a great number of nationally sponsored aid efforts, with countries from the United States down to Botswana pledging money, missions or material support. The US and the World Bank top the table in monetary terms, with around $114 million promised by Barack Obama’s government and an emergency grant of $100 million from the World Bank. (Exactly how much of this cash actually reaches Haiti, and how much negotiates the notoriously corrupt official structures when it gets there, is another matter.) There are, needless to say, a not-so-small army of aid workers on the ground now, and conditions have stabilised to a point.

NGOs and even that den of thieves quaintly known as ‘the international community’ are, of course, reliable up to a point in delivering frontline aid in the throes of a disaster. Indeed, many such efforts in such extraordinarily difficult conditions (according to a UN spokeswoman, the worst disaster her organisation has ever faced) are genuinely heroic. Yet bureaucratic inertia, as well as the logistics of getting people into a country with a wrecked airport from thousands of miles away, assures that most help does not arrive until ‘the worst is over’ - and when the time comes to rebuild the resultant presence of so many dubious imperialist interests makes accepting emergency relief, however necesssary, a poisoned chalice (the US has a history of meddling in Haiti, as we shall see).

Certainly, we should have no truck with another iteration of the most depressing pattern in disaster coverage - the running battle between saintly aid workers and malicious, conniving locals. It was not long until the headlines were filled with lurid tales of looting and sundry barbarism among the local population. For once, Britain’s gooiest liberal daily, The Independent, was united with the American crypto-racist slavery nostalgia outfit, the Council of Conservative Citizens, in running shock headlines about “thugs.”

Fox News, Rupert Murdoch’s infamous American cable news network - whose coverage’s fantasy-to-reality ratio is currently somewhere between those of the Sun and Der Stürmer - could barely bring itself to cover Haiti. “All eyes are on the Massachusetts Senate race,” said solipsistic Fox commentator Sean Hannity, in the immediate aftermath of the quake; nothing like the tedious spectacle of bourgeois politics for a distraction from a mountain of corpses. His buffoonish colleague, Bill O’Reilly, used the happy occasion of a couple of hundred thousand deaths to attack Barack Obama, for not taking the necessary steps to prevent aid money from falling into the hands of a sinister and ever-so-slightly enticing criminal demi-monde full of extortionists and “voodoo priests”.

The truth is - shall we say - a little more complicated. It is unsurprising that in the midst of such pandemonium, some resort to theft and intimidation to get their basic necessities. It is unsurprising, moreover, that cynical criminal organisations should take advantage of the confusion to advance their own interests (the US government, for instance). Disasters very often have the opposite effect, however - people realise that they will survive better by banding together. Shattered communities are reported to have taken policing into their own hands, organising ramshackle militias with the tacit cooperation of an organisationally crippled police force. An American general insisted that Haiti was less violent after the earthquake than before it - probably true, and in fact exactly what you would expect, were you not pushing basically colonial discourses about savages and their voodoo rites.

As is typical, such stereotypes - the Haitian-as-savage and the Haitian-as-powerless-victim - are recycled in a total historical vacuum. And Haiti’s history is, despite its modest condition today, a proud one. Hispaniola, the island it shares with the Dominican Republic, was colonised first by the Spanish in the 16th century. The invaders did not find it easy; rebellious indigenous peoples put up sturdy military resistance, only finally overcome over a decade after Christopher Columbus first founded a settlement. Later, under French rule, the colony became - like many others - the destination for African slaves. The Code Noir, apparently intended by Louis XIV to mitigate conditions among the colonial slaves, ended up putting the official seal on brutal methods of ensuring ‘labour discipline’.

A century later, revolution broke out in France - and the repercussions were to reach the periphery of its empire. A first, unsuccessful revolt - which did not attempt to free the slaves - was defeated by the colonial authorities. In 1791, the slaves decided that enough was enough - a call to arms was issued by a Vodou (not “voodoo”) priest, and the revolt spread rapidly. Over the next 13 years, unstable political accommodations with revolutionary France slowly disintegrated, and war reached a brutal pitch after Napoleon, having been informed that to restore order on the island would require him to re-establish slavery and “destroy 30,000 negroes and negresses”, ordered increasingly desperate acts of savagery.

It came to nothing - on new year’s day 1804, the new country of Haiti declared independence. It was the first independent state in the Caribbean or Latin America since its colonisation, and the first post-colonial country anywhere in the world under black rule. The remaining whites, previously tolerated by the revolutionaries, were massacred by an insurgent majority fresh out of patience. Haiti’s first ruler, Jean Jacques Dessalines, was unrepentant: “We have repaid these cannibals, war for war, crime for crime, outrage for outrage.”

Like all Latin American countries Haiti’s more recent history has been a catalogue of shadier imperialist interference, of the type for which the US can be thanked for systematising into foreign policy. It occupied the country for almost two decades from 1915, at which point it was a German semi-colony; the US has since sponsored various dictatorships in Haiti, and continues to persistently interfere in its politics. A particular thorn in America’s side has been Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a left-populist who has been deposed twice in US-supported coups. The result is two centuries of political turmoil, during which Haiti has been divided and reunited several times and dogged by brutal regimes and the revolts that overthrew them; this history - heroic and tragic in equal measure - brought it to January 12 2010, crippled and impoverished.

There are two major lessons here. Firstly, the idea that the bourgeoisie is a ‘democratic’ class is complete bunk. The Haitian revolution was resisted to the hilt by the newly founded republic (and then empire) of France, still drunk on the insurrectionary atmosphere of 1789. It was isolated by its neighbours, the US refusing recognition until the southern secession due to pressure from slave-owners; it also, of course, beat America to the abolition of slavery by over six decades. Even the new Latin American republics that formed in the Haitian revolution’s inspiring wake were troubled by the slave question, and Haiti was excluded from the first conference of such countries in 1826. This is because it was the slaves and oppressed indigenous peoples that made, and led, the revolution, not the bourgeoisie.

The latter’s most radical representatives produced works of historic importance, from which the Haitian insurrectionaries took no small inspiration, it is true (as an aside, it was an even more powerful earthquake in Portugal that led Voltaire to cast his most barbed attacks on church dogma, and Immanuel Kant to formulate the first serious theory of seismology); but it was not the French or American bourgeoisie that internalised that democratic spirit, but brutally exploited colonial chattel - and later, the nascent working class in Europe.

Secondly, as many on the left have pointed out today, this is not simply a natural disaster. Haiti’s parlous condition has been engineered by an imperialist state system that super-exploits the subordinate states in order to reproduce the military-economic hegemony of the US, and thereby the global conditions for capitalist production. Capitalism has demolished Haiti’s cities, and buried its population in their rubble.

Slavery, occupation, massacres - none of it was enough for this system, and as its decline sharpens and its logic disintegrates, nothing will ever be enough. Communism is the true heir to the Haitian revolutionaries.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Quake: No Act of God (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1002298)

Millions around the world were appalled at the death and devastation in Haiti. James Turley puts the calamity into context

As readers will know, just before 5pm local time on January 12, a catastrophic earthquake struck Haiti. Its epicentre was very close to Léogâne, a well-populated town not far from the capital, Port-au-Prince.

The tremor is estimated at 7 on the seismic moment magnitude scale (which is similar to but more precise than the old Richter scale). Seismologists recorded no less than 33 aftershocks, themselves reaching about 5-6 on the scale. Soon, Haiti was descending into almost biblical chaos.

An earthquake this powerful would have caused significant infrastructural damage in a first-world metropolis, and probably some loss of life too. In Haiti, however, things are of a qualitatively different order. It is the poorest country in the western hemisphere; its buildings are not state-of-the-art, reinforced concrete constructions, but built on the cheap or - in the case of the many large and overpopulated slums, including the infamous Cité Soleil - on no budget at all. The hospitals are not well equipped, well maintained medical centres typical of the global ‘north’ - and in any case, all those in the capital collapsed during the quake. There is, needless to say, no equivalent to the American Federal Emergency Management Authority waiting to step in and re-establish control.

As such, the devastation is horrifying; it is a humanitarian disaster on a scale not seen at least since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed over 230,000 (triggered, of course, by another earthquake). Over 80% of the buildings in Léogâne were destroyed. The shaky infrastructure of the country has been shattered, and the relevant government agencies - however feeble their efforts could only have been in any event - now lie in ruins.

Amid the debris, what benefits of civilisation that had not already been sabotaged by a predatory global capitalism evaporated. Survivors had no choice but to sleep in the streets or otherwise exposed to the elements - only the open air is guaranteed not to fall on your head in the event of another aftershock. Medical care in the immediate aftermath reverted effectively back to the stone age; but a bigger problem than treating the 250,000-odd injured was presented by their less fortunate compatriots. The sheer volume of corpses - combined with damage to roads, communications and the rest - rendered disposal a logistical nightmare. Estimates as to the death toll start at 100,000 and go up to 500,000 or even higher: 5% of the total population. The government has confirmed, at time of writing, that 70,000 corpses have already been buried in mass graves, but they will be clearing the rubble for some time yet.

Mati Goldstein, the chief Israeli aid worker in the country, even found himself uttering the ‘H’ word - “Everywhere, the acrid smell of bodies hangs in the air. It’s just like the stories we are told of the holocaust - thousands of bodies everywhere. You have to understand that the situation is true madness and, the more time passes, there are more and more bodies, in numbers that cannot be grasped. It is beyond comprehension.”

Goldstein’s is one of a great number of nationally sponsored aid efforts, with countries from the United States down to Botswana pledging money, missions or material support. The US and the World Bank top the table in monetary terms, with around $114 million promised by Barack Obama’s government and an emergency grant of $100 million from the World Bank. (Exactly how much of this cash actually reaches Haiti, and how much negotiates the notoriously corrupt official structures when it gets there, is another matter.) There are, needless to say, a not-so-small army of aid workers on the ground now, and conditions have stabilised to a point.

NGOs and even that den of thieves quaintly known as ‘the international community’ are, of course, reliable up to a point in delivering frontline aid in the throes of a disaster. Indeed, many such efforts in such extraordinarily difficult conditions (according to a UN spokeswoman, the worst disaster her organisation has ever faced) are genuinely heroic. Yet bureaucratic inertia, as well as the logistics of getting people into a country with a wrecked airport from thousands of miles away, assures that most help does not arrive until ‘the worst is over’ - and when the time comes to rebuild the resultant presence of so many dubious imperialist interests makes accepting emergency relief, however necesssary, a poisoned chalice (the US has a history of meddling in Haiti, as we shall see).

Certainly, we should have no truck with another iteration of the most depressing pattern in disaster coverage - the running battle between saintly aid workers and malicious, conniving locals. It was not long until the headlines were filled with lurid tales of looting and sundry barbarism among the local population. For once, Britain’s gooiest liberal daily, The Independent, was united with the American crypto-racist slavery nostalgia outfit, the Council of Conservative Citizens, in running shock headlines about “thugs.”

Fox News, Rupert Murdoch’s infamous American cable news network - whose coverage’s fantasy-to-reality ratio is currently somewhere between those of the Sun and Der Stürmer - could barely bring itself to cover Haiti. “All eyes are on the Massachusetts Senate race,” said solipsistic Fox commentator Sean Hannity, in the immediate aftermath of the quake; nothing like the tedious spectacle of bourgeois politics for a distraction from a mountain of corpses. His buffoonish colleague, Bill O’Reilly, used the happy occasion of a couple of hundred thousand deaths to attack Barack Obama, for not taking the necessary steps to prevent aid money from falling into the hands of a sinister and ever-so-slightly enticing criminal demi-monde full of extortionists and “voodoo priests”.

The truth is - shall we say - a little more complicated. It is unsurprising that in the midst of such pandemonium, some resort to theft and intimidation to get their basic necessities. It is unsurprising, moreover, that cynical criminal organisations should take advantage of the confusion to advance their own interests (the US government, for instance). Disasters very often have the opposite effect, however - people realise that they will survive better by banding together. Shattered communities are reported to have taken policing into their own hands, organising ramshackle militias with the tacit cooperation of an organisationally crippled police force. An American general insisted that Haiti was less violent after the earthquake than before it - probably true, and in fact exactly what you would expect, were you not pushing basically colonial discourses about savages and their voodoo rites.

As is typical, such stereotypes - the Haitian-as-savage and the Haitian-as-powerless-victim - are recycled in a total historical vacuum. And Haiti’s history is, despite its modest condition today, a proud one. Hispaniola, the island it shares with the Dominican Republic, was colonised first by the Spanish in the 16th century. The invaders did not find it easy; rebellious indigenous peoples put up sturdy military resistance, only finally overcome over a decade after Christopher Columbus first founded a settlement. Later, under French rule, the colony became - like many others - the destination for African slaves. The Code Noir, apparently intended by Louis XIV to mitigate conditions among the colonial slaves, ended up putting the official seal on brutal methods of ensuring ‘labour discipline’.

A century later, revolution broke out in France - and the repercussions were to reach the periphery of its empire. A first, unsuccessful revolt - which did not attempt to free the slaves - was defeated by the colonial authorities. In 1791, the slaves decided that enough was enough - a call to arms was issued by a Vodou (not “voodoo”) priest, and the revolt spread rapidly. Over the next 13 years, unstable political accommodations with revolutionary France slowly disintegrated, and war reached a brutal pitch after Napoleon, having been informed that to restore order on the island would require him to re-establish slavery and “destroy 30,000 negroes and negresses”, ordered increasingly desperate acts of savagery.

It came to nothing - on new year’s day 1804, the new country of Haiti declared independence. It was the first independent state in the Caribbean or Latin America since its colonisation, and the first post-colonial country anywhere in the world under black rule. The remaining whites, previously tolerated by the revolutionaries, were massacred by an insurgent majority fresh out of patience. Haiti’s first ruler, Jean Jacques Dessalines, was unrepentant: “We have repaid these cannibals, war for war, crime for crime, outrage for outrage.”

Like all Latin American countries Haiti’s more recent history has been a catalogue of shadier imperialist interference, of the type for which the US can be thanked for systematising into foreign policy. It occupied the country for almost two decades from 1915, at which point it was a German semi-colony; the US has since sponsored various dictatorships in Haiti, and continues to persistently interfere in its politics. A particular thorn in America’s side has been Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a left-populist who has been deposed twice in US-supported coups. The result is two centuries of political turmoil, during which Haiti has been divided and reunited several times and dogged by brutal regimes and the revolts that overthrew them; this history - heroic and tragic in equal measure - brought it to January 12 2010, crippled and impoverished.

There are two major lessons here. Firstly, the idea that the bourgeoisie is a ‘democratic’ class is complete bunk. The Haitian revolution was resisted to the hilt by the newly founded republic (and then empire) of France, still drunk on the insurrectionary atmosphere of 1789. It was isolated by its neighbours, the US refusing recognition until the southern secession due to pressure from slave-owners; it also, of course, beat America to the abolition of slavery by over six decades. Even the new Latin American republics that formed in the Haitian revolution’s inspiring wake were troubled by the slave question, and Haiti was excluded from the first conference of such countries in 1826. This is because it was the slaves and oppressed indigenous peoples that made, and led, the revolution, not the bourgeoisie.

The latter’s most radical representatives produced works of historic importance, from which the Haitian insurrectionaries took no small inspiration, it is true (as an aside, it was an even more powerful earthquake in Portugal that led Voltaire to cast his most barbed attacks on church dogma, and Immanuel Kant to formulate the first serious theory of seismology); but it was not the French or American bourgeoisie that internalised that democratic spirit, but brutally exploited colonial chattel - and later, the nascent working class in Europe.

Secondly, as many on the left have pointed out today, this is not simply a natural disaster. Haiti’s parlous condition has been engineered by an imperialist state system that super-exploits the subordinate states in order to reproduce the military-economic hegemony of the US, and thereby the global conditions for capitalist production. Capitalism has demolished Haiti’s cities, and buried its population in their rubble.

Slavery, occupation, massacres - none of it was enough for this system, and as its decline sharpens and its logic disintegrates, nothing will ever be enough. Communism is the true heir to the Haitian revolutionaries.

[cb9's_unity]

Q, I have to see if I can get a few clarifications in the post you made. At some points the article makes it seem that Haiti is actually somewhat calm and that the people are experiencing very little violence. However in another part it mentions
Naturally, capitalism cannot allow a state of continual chaos and utter breakdown such as exists in Haiti now.
What exactly is "chaos" and "utter breakdown"? I could very easily be missing something but the author seems to be painting different pictures of Haiti whenever a new image of the country will fit his description.
Also the following sentence is a little unnerving
Many of their troops are black, meaning they will tend to have a sympathy with the Haitian people
Is the author really trying to say that black soldiers will feel more connections with people just because their black? If I felt more connected to white people just because I'm white I probably wouldn't even be allowed in the OI on this board. I simply can't imagine that sane white people feel any less sympathetic to the Haitians than black people. Again if I'm missing something then please point it out.

[MilitantWorker]

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/01/21/haiti.police.shooting/index.html?hpt=C1

[Psy]

My unit is sending volunteers, I was asked if I wanted to go.

I am in an Airborne Long Range Surveillance infantry unit.

The kind of troops sent to the area doesn't really act as a clear indicator of the intentions. Yes, I am in a specialized infantry unit, but are we gonna go there and scout on Haitians to provide intel for special operations units? Obviously not.

The troops will probably be protecting US/international interests on the island, and doing general crowd control/police type work.

(obviously the presence of the US military is a bad thing, for some reason whenever I post on military issues people seem to get the impression that I am in favor of US imperialism, I'm just trying to explain some things)
Well if the US sent mostly logistical and engineering units then it would give the US for capabilities to provide humanitarian aid, the fact most are not suggests the US are not deploying to Haiti to really help the people of Haiti.

[The Douche]

Well if the US sent mostly logistical and engineering units then it would give the US for capabilities to provide humanitarian aid, the fact most are not suggests the US are not deploying to Haiti to really help the people of Haiti.

They very well, may be sending mostly units to fix the infrastructure/provide aid. Maybe my unit was just there to protect said units? Who knows, certainly not me.

Either way, the presence of the US military, even units such as engineers and medical specialists, is still negative.

[Psy]

They very well, may be sending mostly units to fix the infrastructure/provide aid. Maybe my unit was just there to protect said units? Who knows, certainly not me.

Protection from looters? What are US supply convoys that untrained that they can't defend their convoys from threats that are not even irregular infantry (since even Haitian gangsters are not organized into any kind of disciplined fighting force)? Of course they wouldn't be able to defend against riots suggesting the US military are planning on not really dealing with providing enough aid to pacify the masses in a timely fashion.



Either way, the presence of the US military, even units such as engineers and medical specialists, is still negative.
If the US military provided aid as a priority (the US air lifted tons of supplies to prevent West Berlin from falling to the USSR so providing aid to Haiti in a timely fashion is well within the technical capabilities of the US military) would have been a positive in that there would have been less fatalities and suffering in the short term.

[The Douche]

Protection from looters? What are US supply convoys that untrained that they can't defend their convoys from threats that are not even irregular infantry (since even Haitian gangsters are not organized into any kind of disciplined fighting force)? Of course they wouldn't be able to defend against riots suggesting the US military are planning on not really dealing with providing enough aid to pacify the masses in a timely fashion.

This statement is a demonstration of a lack of understand of military tactics and strategy. Engineers and hospital units don't fight battles, its not their job, and when they have to do it it usually doesn't end well. They have a job to do, and so does the infantry. If non-combat units go somewhere, then combat units go with them to make sure they can do their jobs. That is the way things work.


If the US military provided aid as a priority (the US air lifted tons of supplies to prevent West Berlin from falling to the USSR so providing aid to Haiti in a timely fashion is well within the technical capabilities of the US military) would have been a positive in that there would have been less fatalities and suffering in the short term.

Do you support the military presence in Afghanistan as well?

[Psy]

This statement is a demonstration of a lack of understand of military tactics and strategy. Engineers and hospital units don't fight battles, its not their job, and when they have to do it it usually doesn't end well. They have a job to do, and so does the infantry. If non-combat units go somewhere, then combat units go with them to make sure they can do their jobs. That is the way things work.

I said defended themselves, most supply units in most modern armies are expected to defend themselves to some extent since in major wars with massive fronts with long supply lines not all support units can realistically be escorted. In 1938 the need for all support units to have a light weight weapon to defend themselves led to the M1 Carbine of course it has been long replaced by the M4 carbine.

Now since there is no real hostile army in Haiti I don't see how support units that are properly trained and equipped with M4 Carbines are going to get into any serious trouble especially if they if they remain defensive. Not to mention the UN already had a sizable force in Haiti with light armor so support units could call for backup from UN forces in Haiti if for some strange reason they encounter significant threats.



Do you support the military presence in Afghanistan as well?
I said if the military prioritized aid, meaning I agree with you it is bad but the military does have the capability to do good.

[chebol]

There's a continuously updated and thorough collection of left-wing news and analysis of the unfolding disaster and occupation of Haiti available here at LINKS - International Journal of Socialist Renewal (http://links.org.au/taxonomy/term/215)

[The Douche]

I said defended themselves, most supply units in most modern armies are expected to defend themselves to some extent since in major wars with massive fronts with long supply lines not all support units can realistically be escorted. In 1938 the need for all support units to have a light weight weapon to defend themselves led to the M1 Carbine of course it has been long replaced by the M4 carbine.


I don't know how to explain this to you. Thats not the way things work. Yes every individual in the army is theoretically capable of defending themselves. But engineers have a a job to do (build/fix things) and so does the infantry (kill the enemy). Units are deployed to do their jobs, period, we don't rely on engineers to kill the enemy, thats not the way the military works.


Now since there is no real hostile army in Haiti I don't see how support units that are properly trained and equipped with M4 Carbines are going to get into any serious trouble especially if they if they remain defensive. Not to mention the UN already had a sizable force in Haiti with light armor so support units could call for backup from UN forces in Haiti if for some strange reason they encounter significant threats.


The military takes aid operations pretty seriously since Somalia.


I said if the military prioritized aid, meaning I agree with you it is bad but the military does have the capability to do good.

Arguably, yes. But it is overall still a negative development.

[fredbergen]

Some people seem to think that if the earth shakes or the wind blows or a hundred thousand people die needlessly, class analysis is no longer needed and we can just hope that the military will become a humanitarian force that will serve the people of Haiti and not the strategic interests of U.S. imperialism. This is the logical outcome a miseducation in the reformist school of "socialism" which teaches endless appeals to the class enemy to change the "priorities" of the capitalist system ("jobs not war" etc. -- the "Trotskyist" branch of this school calls this program of begging "transitional demands").

U.S., U.N. Get Out of Haiti Now!

Read the 20 January statement from the Internationalist Group. (http://www.internationalist.org/haitiworkerssoldarity1001.html)

[Psy]

I don't know how to explain this to you. Thats not the way things work. Yes every individual in the army is theoretically capable of defending themselves. But engineers have a a job to do (build/fix things) and so does the infantry (kill the enemy). Units are deployed to do their jobs, period, we don't rely on engineers to kill the enemy, thats not the way the military works.

Yes but that does not mean rear line troops have to be escorted by front line troops or you have a serious problem with the army on a large scale. There is no enemy to kill in Haiti so support units deployed there could just focus on their job, they could easily be defended by the UN giving support units ability to defend themselves from minor threats and hold long enough for UN reinforcement in the unlikely event of more serious threats.



The military takes aid operations pretty seriously since Somalia.

Haiti is not Somali. Insurgency can have been quickly prevented by moving quickly with logistics (that should the top priority of the military), air lifting trucks with their crews: to transport supplies, to transport wounded, to transport support troops, to transport heavy equipment, ect so the first sight of US deployment in Haiti should have been large convoys of trucks leaving the airport with actually aid in various forms.



Arguably, yes. But it is overall still a negative development.
True

[9x19mm]

The American military's transportation abilities are quite incredible??


It is, the C-130's are incredible planes.

[The Douche]

Yes but that does not mean rear line troops have to be escorted by front line troops or you have a serious problem with the army on a large scale. There is no enemy to kill in Haiti so support units deployed there could just focus on their job, they could easily be defended by the UN giving support units ability to defend themselves from minor threats and hold long enough for UN reinforcement in the unlikely event of more serious threats.

Listen man, I'm not a general, or an officer of any sort, I'm just an enlisted man. But in my experience (and I have had a little) the US army knows how to operate. Maybe its not the most efficient organization, but its pretty effective. And the way they have been doing things has been working for them.

I know non-combat soldiers, and have worked with them, in training, and in Iraq. I do not think they should be in any situation where they are unaccompanied by combat arms personnel, thats my opinion.

[fredbergen]

It is a strange feeling to be reading this discussion among "leftists" of tactics for an invading, occupying, colonizing imperialist army, where the "leftists," whatever their differences, agree on the "humanitarian" mission of their own armed forces. The proper term for these gentlemen is "camp followers of imperialism."

[Psy]

Listen man, I'm not a general, or an officer of any sort, I'm just an enlisted man. But in my experience (and I have had a little) the US army knows how to operate. Maybe its not the most efficient organization, but its pretty effective. And the way they have been doing things has been working for them.

I know non-combat soldiers, and have worked with them, in training, and in Iraq. I do not think they should be in any situation where they are unaccompanied by combat arms personnel, thats my opinion.

You know how impractical that is with the large fronts and or multiple fronts ? Think about WWII how could it be possible to escort all support units from the Pacific front to the European Front, answer is the US army didn't escort every support unit during WWII only those they though were at significant risk or when not that inconvenient.

Also how is UN troops being unaccompanied? What can't US troops call for backup from allies? Can't they hold out long for UN troops to reinforce them, can't they coordinate with allies once UN reinforcement meets up with them?

Most Haitians were would have been for the most part friendly to US support troops if aid was being provided in a timely manner, for example supply troops would be able to easily handle crowds themselves if they can keep the queues moving but that would require a abundance of aid that the US military currently has no intention in providing. You can tell because they didn't prioritize logistics and go with the doctrine of getting as trucks on ground as possible and keeping them rolling with as much aid as possible.

[The Douche]

It is a strange feeling to be reading this discussion among "leftists" of tactics for an invading, occupying, colonizing imperialist army, where the "leftists," whatever their differences, agree on the "humanitarian" mission of their own armed forces. The proper term for these gentlemen is "camp followers of imperialism."

Quotes demonstrating this? Everybody has agreed that US military presence is a bad thing in the long run, though it is possible for them to do good things in the immediate situation (handing out food, treating injured etc is good, but the presence of the US military is undoubtedly bad)


You know how impractical that is with the large fronts and or multiple fronts ? Think about WWII how could it be possible to escort all support units from the Pacific front to the European Front, answer is the US army didn't escort every support unit during WWII only those they though were at significant risk or when not that inconvenient.

We have moved on since WW2. The fact that you think you know military tactics better than the US military really is laughable.

[Psy]

We have moved on since WW2.

Yes but backwards, the US has less logistical efficiency in Iraq and Afghanistan then they had in WWII as most logistical convoys go unescorted as most are private, thus supply convoys are run by civilians that when escorted are escorted by untrained mercenaries. So the US went from every supply truck being driven by a solider under the direct command of the US army, to private trucking companies that are driven by civilians that the US army can't command in battles escorted by crap mercenaries that the US army also can't command in battles.

This is progress?



The fact that you think you know military tactics better than the US military really is laughable.

The fact you seem to think the US military knows what is doing is laughable even the US has yet to achieve the same occupation success the USSR did when the USSR occupied Afghanistan (and at the time the CIA was heavily backing the insurgence) so in my option when it come to military tactics of the USSR's are far more proven then the US's. The US can't even achieve the same success of the USSR even though the insurgents are far much weaker (not that I support the USSR's occupation of Afghanistan).

[Kléber]

20,000 troops now

[Kassad]

Some people seem to think that if the earth shakes or the wind blows or a hundred thousand people die needlessly, class analysis is no longer needed and we can just hope that the military will become a humanitarian force that will serve the people of Haiti and not the strategic interests of U.S. imperialism. This is the logical outcome a miseducation in the reformist school of "socialism" which teaches endless appeals to the class enemy to change the "priorities" of the capitalist system ("jobs not war" etc. -- the "Trotskyist" branch of this school calls this program of begging "transitional demands").

U.S., U.N. Get Out of Haiti Now!

Read the 20 January statement from the Internationalist Group. (http://www.internationalist.org/haitiworkerssoldarity1001.html)

From all the groups that the Internationalist Group criticizes as "reformist" socialists, I can't think of one supporting military intervention and occupation in Haiti. Care to elaborate?

[fredbergen]

I am looking at the most recent Liberation right now and nowhere does the PSL call for all U.S./U.N. forces to get out of Haiti. A newer article online credited to "March Forward" "demands an end to the occupation" (when?), while demanding "Real emergency relief," that is, demanding a humanitarian policy for imperialism.

There is a great gulf separating criticism of a imperialist colonial war from forthright proletarian internationalist opposition to the war. It is the same gulf that separated the "socialists" of the Second International who tailed after their own bourgeoisies in World War I while carping sanctimoniously about annexations and the principle of self-determination, from the communist internationalism of Lenin, Liebknecht and Luxemburg. The U.S. must get out of Haiti now and if it won't it should be driven out. If you don't state this clearly and unequivocally, if you call on the colonizers to become humanitarians, then you are just the left wing of the war drive.

[scarletghoul]

HELP THE PEOPLE OF HAITI
REJECT US MILITARY OCCUPATION

By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Chairperson
International League of Peoples' Struggle
24 January 2010

On 12 January 2010, a magnitude 7 earthquake shook the Caribbean nation of Haiti, its epicenter hitting west of the capital Port-au-Prince. The quake and its numerous aftershocks have wrought death and injury to a huge number of people and catastrophic damage to their homes and other vital infrastructures.

Current estimates put the death toll to at least 110,000, with some estimates saying that up to 200,000 have been killed. About 75,000 have already been buried in mass graves but tens of thousands still remain buried in collapsed buildings in the capital. Health facilities are overwhelmed by more than 250,000 wounded, with shortages of medical personnel and supplies hampering efforts to treat them. Estimates indicate that more than 2 million people have been rendered homeless, billions of dollars worth of public and private infrastructure have been devastated.

The people of Haiti are undergoing incalculably great suffering. We, the International League of Peoples' Struggle (ILPS) convey our deepest sympathies to the Haitian people for their loss and express our most heartfelt recognition of their plight.. We join the people of the world in lending our wholehearted support to help ease their suffering and call on our member-organizations and allies to extend immediate rescue and relief support to the victims in Haiti.

In the face of the devastation, the people of Haiti have had to rely on themselves and have shown heroism in helping each other as they go through the rubble, digging with their hands and puny tools to pull out what they can of the victims, both survivors and dead. With hardly any government or international aid support effectively reaching them on the ground despite the speed of information and hype of international disaster response, the people have had to rely on themselves for getting much needed water and emergency supplies.

We salute the Haitian people for helping each other. We also praise the various private organizations and institutions who have been able to extend whatever help on an international scale. At the same time, we direct our strongest denunciation against the US government for deploying military forces in Haiti instead of the personnel of US civilian agencies that are trained and equipped for rescue and relief aid.

The US government's first prolonged reaction to the earthquake was to send in the US Marines and the Army's 82nd Airborne Division. This is the notorious force unit that had invaded Vietnam, the neighboring Dominican Republic in 1965, Grenada in 1984, Haiti in 1994 and Afghanistan. Under the preposterous pretext of providing security to the devastated nation, the US landed and deployed armed soldiers instead of civil rescue personnel and equipment, water and food.

The US military took control of the airport and blocked private relief organizations in order to make way for the flights carried soldiers and military cargo in the crucial first week after the earthquake. Professional rescue teams from many countries were compelled to stay in neighboring Dominican Republic or elsewhere, because they were not given landing slots.

A French plane, carrying a fully-equipped field hospital, was prevented from landing by the US military. The aircraft of the UN World Food Programme was also blocked from landing food, medicine and water for three days, because the US gave priority to flights ferrying US troops and equipment and evacuating Americans and other westerners. On 18 January, a US military spokesperson admitted that they have distributed a measly 15,000 liters of water and 14,000 meal packs. And they had done so chiefly through air drops, prompting the people to complain, “We are not animals!”.

More than ever, the earthquake disaster in Haiti exposes the social vulnerability and devastation caused by two centuries of colonial slavery, debt bondage and modern imperialism. The capability of the people of Haiti to surmount the dire results of such a natural disaster has been undermined and debilitated by man-made disasters, inflicted by foreign debt, US military interventions and occupation, and US-imposed “free market” policies.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere where 80% of the population live in poverty. At its peak in 2008, the country's total foreign debt was at US$1.4 billion, about 40% of its GNP. It has been spending more in debt service than on medical services to the people. Worse still, about 80% of the debt was incurred during the corrupt dictatorship of François and Jean-Claude Duvalier. Ruling under the strings of the US government, the Duvaliers plundered and repressed Haiti, stashing millions of dollars in their private bank accounts abroad.

Haiti is currently occupied by UN troops and controlled by a puppet government installed after the US military kidnapped democratically-elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. Decades of “structural adjustment” programs, under the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, have robbed the nation of the capacity to provide social services, produce enough food from the land and develop national industries. Since the late 1970s, these US-dictated programs have ejected tens of thousands of small farmers from the land and driven them to the overcrowded urban slums. A nation previously self-sufficient in grains and sugar is now importing rice and sugar, chiefly from the US.

It is utterly absurd and perverse for the US to invoke security as pretext for landing its military forces on a country which has long been laid prostrate by imperialist plunder and which just been devastated by the earthquake. Natural disasters have become one of the major pretexts for US military intervention and occupation in various parts of the world. It is the dastardly policy of the US government all over the world to militarize its every pretense at aid and relief assistance, to gain extraterritorial rights and to make propaganda for the acceptance of its military forces.

The ILPS calls on its member-organizations, its allies and the people of the world to extend their solidarity and support for the people of Haiti. Emergency support and relief activities by non-military organizations must be given full play, to help ease the suffering of those most affected. Long-term rehabilitation of Haiti must eventually be mapped out together with the Haitian people, in conjunction with respect for their national sovereignty and self-government.

The ILPS reiterates its call for the withdrawal of all US and other foreign military forces. We call on the American people to demand an end to US military occupation and intervention in Haiti and help reverse the course of US-Haiti relations. We can best help Haiti recover from the devastation of the 12 January earthquake by supporting the Haitian people's struggle for national self-determination against foreign military occupation and economic plunder.###
Right on, Sison

[Edelweiss]

I don't think it would be too absurd to claim that US troops are there not only to protect US interests, but also to actually aid the people in some way. Obviously Haiti is in urgent need of outside help, goods have to be distributed somehow, and that can't be done without some sort of police force, unfortunately.

Remember, Obama still hasn't accomplished anything really at all so far, nothing like he promised, and this is the chance for his administration to proof that he really is the "good", humanitarian president that his PR wants him to be. He is eager now to proof that he can do better than Bush did with Katrina, and wants to somehow feed his PR scheme with actions. So I think that in a way managing this humanitarian crisis in a reasonable and successful manner maybe isn't directly in US interest but in interest of Obama and his administration. Of course they already seem to fail now with this, reading some of the above articles.

[Kassad]

I am looking at the most recent Liberation right now and nowhere does the PSL call for all U.S./U.N. forces to get out of Haiti. A newer article online credited to "March Forward" "demands an end to the occupation" (when?), while demanding "Real emergency relief," that is, demanding a humanitarian policy for imperialism.

There is a great gulf separating criticism of a imperialist colonial war from forthright proletarian internationalist opposition to the war. It is the same gulf that separated the "socialists" of the Second International who tailed after their own bourgeoisies in World War I while carping sanctimoniously about annexations and the principle of self-determination, from the communist internationalism of Lenin, Liebknecht and Luxemburg. The U.S. must get out of Haiti now and if it won't it should be driven out. If you don't state this clearly and unequivocally, if you call on the colonizers to become humanitarians, then you are just the left wing of the war drive.

The very first article we posted on our website about Haiti, by Gloria La Riva: http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=13489&news_iv_ctrl=1261

At the very bottom, it reads:


NO DEPORTATIONS!
END THE OCCUPATION!

I'll be proud to refute any more of your misleading and fallacious bullshit. :)

[fredbergen]

Exactly. There is a very clear difference between "end the occupation" and "get out." Doubly so when the former is combined with calls for "a massive, systematic and humanitarian response" (from who?) It becomes an appeal for the lions to lie down with the lambs, not any kind of class position.

[Kassad]

Exactly. There is a very clear difference between "end the occupation" and "get out." Doubly so when the former is combined with calls for "a massive, systematic and humanitarian response" (from who?) It becomes an appeal for the lions to lie down with the lambs, not any kind of class position.

The Spartacist-descendant left always seems to have this big war of words, such as making minor assaults on the phrase "end the occupation" when it is obvious we are demanding that troops stop occupying Haiti and we use money to help fund relief efforts. We've praised the Cuban and Venezuelan response that has sent doctors, firefighters and rescue workers to assist Haiti when it is in trouble and we support funding these kinds of relief efforts. Your critique is not grounded in reality, as we need to focus on opposing imperialist intervention and supporting humanitarian relief efforts (like those that Cuba has undergone).

[Communist]

======


U.S. troops invade Haiti (http://www.workers.org/2010/world/haiti_0204/)

Pentagon sabotages relief effort, escalates suffering

By John Catalinotto
Published Jan 27, 2010 5:38 PM

Jan. 26. — The U.S. secured its occupation of Haiti when the Pentagon placed 13,000 troops in the country around the capital and on nearby ships, with at least 4,000 more scheduled to arrive. It’s now two weeks after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake leveled the capital city and nearby towns, wreaking havoc on the population, and in doing so eliminated the Haitian government bureaucracy, police and the United Nations military mission.

Washington has rushed in its own military to re-establish a repressive force under cover of a “humanitarian” mission needed to bring aid to people who are injured, hungry and thirsty, and without shelter.

Spokespeople from what is left of Haiti’s government estimate that some 200,000 people have died in the disaster, that hundreds of thousands have left the capital area to seek shelter in the North of the country, and there are still some 609,000 without shelter in the capital area itself. (Reuters (http://www.reuters.com/), Jan. 25)

The U.S. Marines and Airborne forces have seized the destroyed presidential palace, the banks, the Port-au-Prince airport and the severely damaged seaport. The U.S. forces took control of air traffic at the airport on Jan. 14. Currently 120 planes can land daily on the one runway, but 1,400 planes are backed up waiting for U.S. permission to land.

Accompanying the U.S. troop surge, the U.N. forces that have occupied Haiti since 2004 have rebuilt their command, which was severely damaged by the earthquake, and are increasing the number of troops from 9,000 to 12,500. Canada, which invaded Haiti in 2004 along with the U.S. and France after the U.S. deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, has doubled its contingent to 2,000 troops.

All reports on the ground from Haiti show that Washington gave first priority to the military buildup, while delaying emergency aid. Comments from officials engaged in aid and rescue missions — even from U.S. allies — show that by giving the military priority, Washington hampered the international humanitarian effort.

Aid officials angered by U.S. military priorities

Guido Bertolaso, who directed Italy’s disaster relief effort after an earthquake in the Abruzzo region in 2009, called the U.S.-led effort “pathetic” and disorganized. He likened it to the early days after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. He suggested that there should be a single international civilian coordinator and that the rescue effort be demilitarized. (Times of London (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/), Jan. 25)

Of the U.S. military buildup, Bertolaso said, “Unfortunately, it’s a massive presence, but it’s not been used in the best way.” Italy’s rightist government of Silvio Berlusconi distanced itself from Bertolaso’s criticism.
The Geneva-based Doctors Without Borders repeatedly had their planes carrying medical supplies bumped to make way for U.S. military aircraft. French Cooperation Minister Alain Joyandet complained of the U.S. priorities. “This is about helping Haiti, not about occupying Haiti,” said Joyandet. Like the Italian government did with Bertolaso, the rightist French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner disowned Joyandet’s response to the U.S. priority. (BBC News (http://news.bbc.co.uk/), Jan. 19)

Washington’s policy had immediate negative consequences. Loris de Filippi, emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders Choscal Hospital in the Cité Soleil section of Port-au-Prince, said on Jan. 20, “We were forced to buy a saw in the market to continue amputations. We are running against time here.” (CBC News (http://www.cbc.ca/news/), Jan. 25)

With hundreds of thousands of Haitians severely injured, delays in receiving antibiotics and cleaning wounds meant Haitians developed gangrene. This forces amputations, which had to be done without anesthesia, and could lead to death.

The Canadian government followed the U.S. lead. It had planned to send several Heavy Urban Search Rescue Teams, which were immediately readied but never sent. Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said this was because “the government had opted to send Canadian Armed Forces instead.” (Toronto Sun (http://www.torontosun.com/), Jan. 17)

Washington faced growing criticism that aid was being held up. Finally, on Jan. 24, U.S. soldiers and Brazilian U.N. troops handed out food and water in Cité Soleil, a neighborhood of poor people in Port-au-Prince. They still couldn’t disguise the military effort: “U.S. Army Humvees formed a corridor alongside cinder-block houses, and hundreds of Haitians lined up to receive food packs, water and crackers.” (Reuters Canada (http://ca.reuters.com/), Jan. 24)

In contrast, by Jan. 24, socialist Cuba, without sending any troops, had 650 doctors and medical technicians operating field hospitals in the earthquake area. Its teams included Haitian medical students who were in their final year of medical school in Cuba. The Cuban teams had already treated 18,000 injured Haitians and performed 1,700 surgical interventions.

Self-organization of the Haitians

As they did in reports from New Orleans after Katrina hit, the corporate media here painted the Haitian survivors as a mob tearing each other apart for whatever they could get their hands on. Even the U.S. ambassador to Haiti, Kenneth Merten, had to contradict this slander. Merten told PBS: “People should be aware that the vast majority of Haitians here are behaving in a calm and peaceful manner.” (BBC News, Jan. 21)

Other observers more friendly to the Haitian population described how Haitians, though without food and water for days, organized themselves to rescue those trapped and to receive and share aid.

Matthew Price reported: “During the last week in Haiti, I was left with one overwhelming impression — it is the survivors who are helping themselves. They are pulling together, not tearing themselves apart.” (BBC News, Jan. 21)

Kim Ives of the weekly newspaper Haiti Liberté and Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! had similar comments. Ives described a scene outside General Hospital: “Here were people who were going in and out of the hospital bringing food to their loved ones in there or needing to go to the hospital, and there were a bunch of U.S. 82nd Airborne soldiers in front yelling in English at this crowd. They didn’t know what they were doing. They were creating more chaos rather than diminishing it.” (Haiti Liberté (http://www.haiti-liberte.com/), Jan. 20-26)

And when a truckload of food came unannounced in the middle of the night to the Delmas 33 neighborhood, “the local popular organization ... immediately mobilized their members. They came out. They set up a perimeter. They set up a cordon. They lined up about 600 people who were staying on the soccer field behind the house, which is also a hospital, and they distributed the food in an orderly, equitable fashion. They were totally sufficient. They didn’t need Marines. They didn’t need the U.N.” (Democracy Now! (http://www.democracynow.org/) transcript, Jan. 20)

Ives told Workers World (http://www.workers.org/) on Jan. 26: “The earthquake was half a revolution, removing all the government buildings and virtually eliminating the repressive power of the state. That’s why the U.S. is rushing in to replace that state power, to control Haiti’s future and to prevent the people of Haiti from carrying out the other half.”

======================================






http://www.listlanguage.com/images2/haiti.bmp (http://www.workers.org/haiti/)




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Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire
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[Communist]

.

U.S. okays illegal U.S. takeover of Haiti (http://www.workers.org/2010/world/haiti_0211/)

By G. Dunkel

Published Feb 7, 2010 7:39 PM

The 20 U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ships, 63 helicopters, 204 joint operations vehicles and approximately 13,000 military personnel — 10,000 afloat and 3,000 ashore — occupying Haiti, were sanctioned by the U.N. as of Jan. 22. No request from Haiti was needed — the U.S. wanted to send troops and it did. The occupation and the U.N. approval have no legal basis.

These U.S. Marines, Airborne troops and sailors have little to no training in humanitarian missions. Their basic job is to kill or disable the Pentagon’s enemies on the battlefield.

Haitian President René Préval criticized a lack of coordination among countries bringing aid to the Caribbean nation. The Haitian government, a creation of a U.S.-sponsored kidnapping in 2004 that ousted the elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, is itself unable to coordinate the aid effort.

The U.S. claims that it has committed to spending $317 million on aid to Haiti, but of each U.S. taxpayer dollar being used for “aid,” 40 cents is going to the U.S. military. Another 36 cents funds the U.S. Agency for International Development’s disaster assistance — which includes items ranging from $5,000 generators to $35 hygiene kits with soap, toothbrushes and toothpaste for a family of five, according to a Jan. 27 AP report. Only 1 cent on a dollar goes to the Haitian government.

The insensitive and cruel conduct of the U.S. government can be seen in how it decided to stop emergency medical evacuations from Haiti to Florida. A New York Times article reported that Florida Gov. Charlie Crist complained about the cost to the state. Crist denied that charge, but says he would like Florida to get some aid from the federal government or from other states.

Only after five days of criticism and pressure did the White House order medical evacuations to restart. During that period the whole world could see that U.S. policies were causing the needless deaths of Haitians.
Reports are sketchy, but it appears that most of the million or so homeless in the Port-au-Prince area are getting some water. Food is another story.

Distribution has been spotty. There are media reports that people have said they are not eating. Food is available in the markets, and the banks have been opened to allow people to access their accounts and money their relatives abroad have sent.

Some of the towns outside of Port-au-Prince say they haven’t gotten food, water or help with shelter in the two weeks since the earthquake. Others have finally started to get food and water. (Associated Press, Jan. 28)

The U.S. commander running the show, Lt. Gen. Ken Keen, claims that food is “flooding” into the city. (AP, Jan. 27) However, the U.S. is sending it any which way — it won’t guarantee that any location gets regular rations.
The big aid organizations have divided Port-au-Prince into 16 areas and each has taken the responsibility for one area.

The U.N. World Food Program says it has reached 450,000 people and urgently appealed to governments for more cash. This figure means that there are likely tens of thousands of people that the WFP hasn’t reached.
The number of people living in Port-au-Prince now, three weeks after the earthquake struck, is hard to estimate. There are no accurate reports on how many people have still received no aid, since between 100,000 and 200,000 people died in the earthquake. Tens of thousands of people who had family or friendship ties elsewhere have used government-subsidized buses and boats to leave the capital. Some analysts believe that a deliberate plan to depopulate Port-au-Prince is afoot.

It is not surprising that Port-au-Prince is having so much trouble recovering. According to Alex Dupuy, a sociologist and author of several books on social, political and economic developments in Haiti: “With a population of more than two million in a city whose infrastructure could at best sustain a population of 100,000, the local and national public administrations simply abandoned the city to itself. Neither provided meaningful services of any kind — schools, health care, electricity, potable water, sanitation, zoning and construction regulations.” (www.tanbou.com (http://www.tanbou.com)).

Anything that the administration did served the interests of the few rich Haitians and foreigners in the city, most of whom survived the quake relatively unscathed.


------------------------------------------------









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[Communist]

_____________________________

Under the boot of U.S. occupation
Haiti’s ongoing struggle to recover (http://www.workers.org/2010/world/haiti_0218/)

By Monica Moorehead
Published Feb 12, 2010

As the people of Haiti continue heroic efforts to recover from the Jan. 12 devastating earthquake that has claimed at least 200,000 lives, they are facing a new challenge — an occupation of 13,000 U.S. troops and advanced weaponry. This new occupation was sanctioned by the United Nations on Jan. 22 without any say from the Haitians themselves.

The main goal of these troops is not to assist in any kind of humanitarian aid for the Haitian people but rather to extend U.S. imperialism’s economic influence in the Caribbean and parts of Latin America. While the Haitian people need food, doctors, clean water, housing and the technology to rebuild their infrastructure in the capital of Port-au-Prince and throughout the island nation, once again the U.S. has contributed nothing but arrogance and terror to a people who first won their independence in 1804 from the French colonizers who enslaved them.

The fact that President Barack Obama appointed former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to oversee the U.S. presence in Haiti exposes the hypocrisy of the U.S. government’s concern for the Haitian people.

Under the Clinton administration, U.S. Marines illegally removed from office the democratically elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in 1994. Under the Bush regime, President Aristide was kidnapped from Haiti in 2004. Now exiled in South Africa, President Aristide has made a strong public appeal to be allowed to return to Haiti to help his people in the aftermath of the earthquake.

On Feb. 5, an estimated 300 people confronted Clinton in Port-au-Prince to complain that the U.S. had not carried out its promises to bring immediate aid to the Haitian people. The previous day, the French-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) stated that a photographer from Le Nouvelliste, the oldest and largest mainstream Haitian daily, had a camera physically taken from him by six U.S. Marines.

The reporter, Homère Cardichon, was taking photos of a protest by Haitians at the U.S. ambassador’s home in the capital.
“Six Marines come up and surrounded me,” Cardichon told RSF. “Then they took my camera in my opened work bag and left with it. An hour later, one of them came back and photographed me. Then he returned my camera to me. I saw that the soldiers had erased some of the photos.”

The RSF denounced the Marines’ actions as “a flagrant act of censorship,” stating that “news and information is vital for reconstruction in Haiti and for the efforts of its citizens to start rebuilding their lives.” (RSF, Feb. 4)

There is another reason why the U.S. sent thousands of Marines to Haiti: to contain any efforts being made on the part of the Haitians to reconstruct and rebuild their lives in the aftermath of the earthquake crisis.

This was confirmed in a Feb. 5 letter sent by Mary Ellen McNish, general secretary of the American Friends Service Committee.

The letter reads in part: “I’m glad to report that AFSC’s assessment team has returned safely from Haiti, where they spent time in Port-au-Prince viewing firsthand the immense devastation of the capital city. They report that the formal structures that keep a country running were very hard hit, especially because many government ministers and mid-level civil servants died in the quake. Many institutions that were the pillars of the community, such as churches, medical facilities and schools, were badly damaged or were destroyed.

“According to Jorge Lafitte, AFSC Regional Director of Latin America, the situation in Haiti is not like other disasters to which AFSC has recently responded. The destruction of the capital city and the collapse of the Haitian middle class, who sustain the country, make this a very different crisis.

“However, some of the poorest areas in the city were not as greatly affected because buildings there are not large permanent structures and were not as lethal if they fell. People in these areas have slowly returned to informal systems of survival and our team noted that there seemed to be little violence and looting.

“A variety of makeshift solutions has developed from formal camps of 80-100,000 people to smaller groups of 700-1,000 banding together where they can. Some residents are camping in front of their destroyed homes. In talking with them, our team found that people hope they will reconstruct their houses and it is safer to stay close by.

“Geri Sicola, Associate General Secretary for International Programs, was able to visit one of the three centers where AFSC is providing emergency assistance to people living in a makeshift shelter on the grounds of a school. On that day more than 600 people were provided a meal. Our partner, Swiss Interchurch Aid, is using a private home’s kitchen to produce the food — an example of the practical and generous gestures being made by so many Haitians in this crisis. The meals include rice, beans, vegetables, and the ingredients are purchased locally or in the Dominican Republic, bolstering local economies.” (http://tinyurl.com/yfbmaht)

On Feb. 6, the BBC reported that the G7 group — the seven richest capitalist countries, including the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan — announced that they were writing off Haiti’s debt of more than $1 billion. Not only should Haiti’s debt be cancelled by these countries and the imperialist banks, but reparations in the billions of dollars should be paid to the Haitian people for the theft of their resources and labor over the centuries.

_______________________________________



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Verbatim copying and distribution of
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[Communist]

.
U.S. reinforces occupation as Haitians mourn, rebuild (http://www.workers.org/2010/world/haiti_0225/)

By G. Dunkel
Feb 19, 2010

Haiti remains a country devastated by the Jan. 12 earthquake. The disaster has been successfully used by the United States as a pretext for reoccupying the country with thousands of military troops.

On Feb. 12, Haiti mourned its dead. Tens of thousands came out to the ceremonies in Port-au-Prince at the ruined National Palace.

The mourning was made heavier because tens of thousands of the dead were tossed, unidentified, into mass graves. The Haitian government estimates the death toll at 213,000. Thousands of the living are amputees, facing a hard life made harder because of the loss of a limb. Over a million Haitians are now homeless in the cities devastated by the earthquake — Port-au-Prince, Petionville, Carrefour, Jacmel, Leogane and Petit-Goave. Hundreds of thousands have fled to cities not touched by the earthquake, where they are living doubled up with family and friends, scrambling and scraping to survive.

Even as Haitians grieve, rebuild and struggle, the country is occupied by 20,000 U.S. troops that do little to help the population.

Food is still in short supply, but the United Nations’ World Food Program appears to be getting enough distributed so nobody is starving to death. Many Haitians complain of graft, corruption and insensitive incompetence in its operation and food being used as a tool to force the hungry homeless to go to where the authorities want to send them. (Publico, Feb. 5)

Epidemics of diarrhea, flu, scabies, ringworm and many other preventable diseases are raging throughout the makeshift camps that are estimated to be home to more than 300,000 people in the capital alone. People in these camps have scant water, which means no baths, no sanitation, no latrines and no way to dispose of their garbage.

A few maquiladora shops have opened, but getting supplies in and product out is dicey. The U.N. has hired a few thousand Haitians to clear the streets and remove tottering buildings. However, some estimates put the unemployment rate at 70 percent before the earthquake. (National Public Radio, June 14) Saying it has gotten “significantly worse” means almost nobody has a job.

Adding to the desperation, the U.S. Coast Guard returned 78 Haitians who were seized near the Bahamas in an overloaded sailboat. A Coast Guard spokesperson said there was no sign that more Haitians than usual were fleeing by sea, but it had still stepped up patrols. (AFP, Feb. 12)

The USS Bataan has arrived in Haitian waters. (Haiti-Liberté, Feb. 10-16)

Although the Pentagon has both denied and admitted that the Bataan is outfitted as a floating prison to be used outside the U.S., the Guardian (U.K.) has established that it was previously anchored in the Indian Ocean and used to hold prisoners from Afghanistan.

According to the Washington Post (Jan. 22), the 20,000 or so members of the U.S. armed forces currently in Haiti are operating under an agreement with the U.N. to “oversee all Haitian air and sea ports, and to help secure Haitian roads.” They also have “broad scope to intervene in civil disturbances, subject to a request by Haitian authorities.” They will, however, operate under their own “autonomous” command structure.

This agreement appears to put Haiti under a U.N. and U.S. protectorate.

But Haitians, no matter how desperate their situation, have not remained passive. Some of them are going through collapsed buildings, salvaging metal reinforcement, lumber and furniture to reuse or resell.

When about an inch of rain fell on Feb. 11 around 4:30 a.m., the first response was wails of helplessness and misery. Then anger at the U.N. and the René Préval government took hold and spontaneous, large demonstrations began marching to U.N. headquarters and the Haitian government’s headquarters, both located near the airport, which is currently a U.S. base. (Kevin Pina, www.haitiaction.net (http://www.haitiaction.net), Feb. 11)

The protesters chanted, “If Aristide was here, he would be soaked along with us.” They also chanted that they had nothing to keep off the rain and that they needed tents. They confronted the Haitian cops who came out to stop them. There was some pushing and shoving, but no injuries resulted.

There have been a number of earlier demonstrations at the government’s current headquarters, which is the former headquarters of the judicial police. On Feb. 5, when Bill Clinton and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon came to visit Préval, a group called PLONBAVIL came out to demand that aid be given to the true victims of the earthquake. The organization includes a number of former public employees in the telephone company, the ports and so on, who were illegally laid off.

Berthony Dupont, the editorial director of Haïti-Liberté, points out, “Indeed, the finishing stroke that the country received Jan. 12, despite the immense suffering of the people, seems to be a good thing for a group of speculators and mercenaries in the pay of the occupiers. That’s the reason why the imperialists’ aid never reached the masses of the people.”

Those in the U.S. in solidarity with the people of Haiti must continue to demand that U.S. troops be withdrawn immediately, that exiled and democratically elected President Bertrand Aristide be allowed to return, and that the Haitian people be able to rebuild their country free from imperialist domination and military occupation.


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