The earthquakes which devastated Haiti have of course brought the usual ‘muddled and confused’ international relief efforts into swinging action and no country has proved its sincerity to international aid more than the United States of America which has thoughtfully and compassionately donated 10′000 US troops to relief efforts. Haitians picking up the scattered remains of their shattered lives can now do so safely and happily in streets occupied by US troops, sounds good to me I mean you know what kind of Anarchy reigned in the aftermath of the disaster…
Or perhaps, just perhaps it wasn’t quite the post-apocalyptic, Mad Max scenario that the media has been whipping up as a rather emphatic quote from Doctor Evan Lyon of Partners in Health suggests;
“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.”
But Hey! let’s not go taking any chances now I think a couple of regiments of machine-gun armed troops will be the first thing people will want…screw the medical supplies, screw the food, screw shelter oh and…screw the 3′500 UN troops who are coming along to help organise their distribution. What Haiti needs is it’s main airport in Port-Au-Prince to be completely clogged up with US military flights, which has forced Humanitarian groups such as Doctors Sans Frontiers to have flights re-routed through the Dominican Republic delaying aid reaching people who badly need it.
Why oh why would the US want to go sending that many troops to Haiti?
Perhaps it’s something to do with previous US involvement in the country, a far from glorious record. The last two centuries have been a merry circus ride of screwing Haiti since its founding by a slave revolt in 1804 including the rather unpleasant occupation by U.S. Marines from 1915-1934 as well as atrocities under dictatorships aided and abetted by Washington (no! Really?) Now this could just be viewed as water under the bridge since it happened well before Sex and the City was popular and therefore is what you might call ‘ancient history’ and is thus irrelevant (did you know that? History has absolutely no bearing on where we are now and that is because it is ’old news’, don’t believe logic and people with an IQ of over 140 who might suggest otherwise) However in 2004 Haiti’s democratically elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was kidnapped by the United States and flown to exile in South Africa, this was of course back in the dark days of rampant regime change being a justification in itself for meddling in the affairs of states too weak to defend themselves and boy of boy are we glad that has all changed. This only being six years ago it is unfortunately ‘recent news’ and it might have to be conceded that it is directly relevant to the present situation.
The United States, together with Canada and France, openly colluded for four years to destabilise Haiti’s elected government, cutting off almost all international aid in order to destroy the economy and make the country ungovernable. What do you know they succeeded in this wholly worthwhile aim. Now if you’re wondering why there are no Haitian government institutions to help with the earthquake relief efforts, then there’s a damn good explanation. Equally this might just have something to do with why there are three million people crowded into the area where the earthquake hit. U.S. policy over the years also helped destroy Haitian agriculture, for example, by forcing the import of subsidized U.S. rice and wiping out thousands of Haitian rice farmers.
Aristide’s first democratic government was overthrown in 1991, by military officers later discovered to be in the pay of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Presently Aristide wants to return to his country, something that the majority of Haitians, with clearly no understanding of ’Democracy’, have demanded since his overthrow. But the United States, that great crusader for democracy, freedom and disaster Capitalism does not want him there. The current Preval government, which is to Washington as the gimp is to the leather industry, has decided that Aristide’s party – the largest in Haiti – will not be allowed to compete in the next elections, now that is what I call Democracy (capital-fuckin-D)These free and fair elections are of course likely to now be delayed.
Naturally this raises the question of why Aristide was deposed by the US in the first place and I think it’s worth noting a few of the terrible crimes that this awful proponent of liberation theology inflicted upon his people during his democratically sanctioned reign, which included;
-The decline in infant mortality from 125 to 110 per 1000 and a drop in the percentage of underweight births from 28% to 19%.
- 195 new primary schools and 104 new public high schools being built including in rural areas where no schools ever before existed
- Reducing the illiteracy rate from 85% to 55%
- Disbanding the Haitian military – trained by the U.S. to be an instrument of civilian control and to use fear tactics to do it. This allowed the Haitian people an unprecedented level of freedom of speech, assembly and personal safety.
- Raising the Minimum wage
- Constructing housing for the lowest paid
- Reducing malnutrition from 63% to 51%
I think you’d all agree, the man is clearly a monster and for a fuller description of his awful dark deeds please do thumb a lift here
So could it be, could it possibly be that Washington’s fear of democracy is the reason why the United States is now sending 10,000 troops and prioritizing “security” over other needs?
Then again there’s that whole pact with the devil business…