NDP and Haiti

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[url=http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/63/63_35.htm]The issue of Aristide’s forced removal[/url] from office and from Haiti was again dropped until the NDP’s Alexa McDonough had the floor.  After asking about CIDA funding cutbacks to Haiti, she returned to Aristide’s allegations and very cautiously asked whether there may have been "a kind of illegitimate regime change":

"To what extent is there some problem associated with the manner in which Aristide’s departure took place? There is I think a strong consensus that clearly this is not a government that was working and Aristide was not going to be able to re-establish legitimacy. Around the real questions of the illegitimate manner in which his departure took place, is there a problem about Canada’s credibility, whether we’ve compromised our own ability to be seen as a trustworthy independent nation? Have we become contaminated somewhat by having been associated with what may be an exaggeration, but a kind of illegitimate regime change, that has now aroused a lot of mistrust in the community, notwithstanding people’s concerns about the Aristide administration?"

Layton said in the House that there should be an investigation of the circumstances surrounding Aristide's removal. Do-nothings in the Bloc and the other two pro-Warshington stooge parties basically laughed it off and refused to acknowledge the NDP's concerns as usual.

Forced removal, coup, same thing. Still, too many Canadians don't give a damn what happens in this hemisphere. And sometimes it's like the phony war in Afghanistan. Many Canadians are against the phony war but do not question the original pretext for sending troops to that country. A greater percentage of Americans are now doubtful of crazy George's and that government's 9/11 narrative than Canadians. So in effect, Canadians are somewhat with the Republican cabal on why we're actually there on the other side of the world. It's the same with Haiti and Colombia etc. Not enough Canadians could be convinced to care enough about the USSA dictating political and economic agendas in this part of the world to turf our pro-Warshington stooges from the halls of power in Ottawa. And the NDP knows it has to concentrate on democratizing Bananada before we even think about challenging Uncle Sam on his war on democracy in the Caribbean, Central and South America, and beyond etc. The NDP just doesn't have the resources to fight our own stoogeocracy and the vicious empire on multiple fronts. Yanks will have to start their own revolution if they want real change.

Why would anyone want to "control" Haiti - the place has no natural resources whatsoever and is of no particular geopolitical value. The place is utterly worthless to any other country. Its not as if they are sitting on any oil reserves or anything. There is NOTHING there. Even the soil is completely eroded due to deforestation. If the world didn't feel sorry for Haiti because its so poor and has suffered such a tragedy this past week - the easiest thing to do would be to do would turn our backs on the place and not spend one red cent there.

It will never happen, but probably the only hope for Haiti would be to ask to be reincorporated into France and then have everyone in Haiti get an EU passport and have massive EU development funds funneled in and for Haitians to get access to French universal social programs etc... nearby Martinique and Guadeloupe are departments of France and people there have per capita incomes that are about 100 times what Haitians have. Or maybe Haiti could apply to be the 11th province of Canada and they could have Michaelle Jean as their head of state!

The Haitian diaspora seems to be quite entrepreneurial and prosperous. If you look at places like Montreal or Miami or New York or Paris where there are large Haitian communities they are some of the most successful recent immigrants. i read that Haitian immigrants in the US within a few years have higher average incomes than African-Americans whose families have been in the US since the beginning of the 19th century. Maybe another solution might be to simply evacuate the whole country and invite the entire population of Haiti to immigrate to Canada or the US or France and turn Haiti into a giant national park.

[url=http://www.gregpalast.com/the-right-testicle-of-hell-history-of-a-haitia... Right Testicle of Hell:
History of a Haitian Holocaust[/url] Greg Palast

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1. Bless the President for having rescue teams in the air almost immediately. That was President Olafur Grimsson of Iceland. On Wednesday, the AP reported that the President of the United States promised, "The initial contingent of 2,000 Marines could be deployed to the quake-ravaged country within the next few days." "In a few days," Mr. Obama? 

2. There's no such thing as a 'natural' disaster. 200,000 Haitians have been slaughtered by slum housing and IMF "austerity" plans.

3. A friend of mine called. Do I know a journalist who could get medicine to her father? And she added, trying to hold her voice together, "My sister, she's under the rubble. Is anyone going who can help, anyone?" Should I tell her, "Obama will have Marines there in 'a few days'"?

4. China deployed rescuers with sniffer dogs within 48 hours. China, Mr. President. China: 8,000 miles distant. Miami: 700 miles close. US bases in Puerto Rico: right there.

5. Obama's Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, "I don't know how this government could have responded faster or more comprehensively than it has." We know Gates doesn't know.

6. From my own work in the field, I know that FEMA has access to ready-to-go potable water, generators, mobile medical equipment and more for hurricane relief on the Gulf Coast. It's all still there. Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who served as the task force commander for emergency response after Hurricane Katrina, told the Christian Science Monitor, “I thought we had learned that from Katrina, take food and water and start evacuating people." Maybe we learned but, apparently, Gates and the Defense Department missed school that day.

7. Send in the Marines. That's America's response. That's what we're good at. The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson finally showed up after three days. With what? It was dramatically deployed — without any emergency relief supplies. It has sidewinder missiles and 19 helicopters.

8. But don't worry, the International Search and Rescue Team, fully equipped and self-sufficient for up to seven days in the field, deployed immediately with ten metric tons of tools and equipment, three tons of water, tents, advanced communication equipment and water purifying capability. They're from Iceland.

9. Gates wouldn't send in food and water because, he said, there was no "structure ... to provide security." For Gates, appointed by Bush and allowed to hang around by Obama, it's security first. That was his lesson from Hurricane Katrina. Blackwater before drinking water.

10. Previous US presidents have acted far more swiftly in getting troops on the ground on that island. Haiti is the right half of the island of Hispaniola. It's treated like the right testicle of Hell. The Dominican Republic the left. In 1965, when Dominicans demanded the return of Juan Bosch, their elected President, deposed by a junta, Lyndon Johnson reacted to this crisis rapidly, landing 45,000 US Marines on the beaches to prevent the return of the elected president.

11. How did Haiti end up so economically weakened, with infrastructure, from hospitals to water systems, busted or non-existent - there are two fire stations in the entire nation - and infrastructure so frail that the nation was simply waiting for "nature" to finish it off? 

Don’t blame Mother Nature for all this death and destruction. That dishonor goes to Papa Doc and Baby Doc, the Duvalier dictatorship, which looted the nation for 28 years. Papa and his Baby put an estimated 80% of world aid into their own pockets - with the complicity of the US government happy to have the Duvaliers and their voodoo militia, Tonton Macoutes, as allies in the Cold War. (The war was easily won: the Duvaliers’ death squads murdered as many as 60,000 opponents of the regime.)

12. What Papa and Baby didn't run off with, the IMF finished off through its "austerity" plans. An austerity plan is a form of voodoo orchestrated by economists zomby-fied by an irrational belief that cutting government services will somehow help a nation prosper. 

13. In 1991, five years after the murderous Baby fled, Haitians elected a priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who resisted the IMF's austerity diktats. Within months, the military, to the applause of Papa George HW Bush, deposed him.
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. The farce was George W. Bush. In 2004, after the priest Aristide was re-elected President, he was kidnapped and removed again, to the applause of Baby Bush.

14. Haiti was once a wealthy nation, the wealthiest in the hemisphere, worth more, wrote Voltaire in the 18th century, than that rocky, cold colony known as New England. Haiti's wealth was in black gold: slaves. But then the slaves rebelled - and have been paying for it ever since...

Uncle Sam's war on democracy in the Caribbean and Latin America continues.

Stockholm wrote:

Why would anyone want to "control" Haiti - the place has no natural resources whatsoever and is of no particular geopolitical value. The place is utterly worthless to any other country. Its not as if they are sitting on any oil reserves or anything. There is NOTHING there.

NDPP

Oh yeah? you may be surprised...

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17063

'Ms Laurent reminds us of Haiti's offshore oil and other mineral riches and recent revival of an old idea to use Haiti as an oil refinery - to be built there as a trans shipment terminal for US supertankers..'

Haiti is a Rich Country - Eurasian Minerals Inc (Vancouver)

http://www.fanmilavalasny.com/main12/Eurasian.html

 

remind wrote:

  Amazing that some are using the plight of Haitians in a political way to try and discredit the NDP...good grief it is pretty damn sickening.

Agreed.  There's plenty of other issues to bring about that discrediting effect.  The scale of this catastrophe is such that no political words from either part of the spectrum can measure up to the profound tragedy that this is.

Last thing i would ever think about in this instance is what any of the damn political parties had to say on their web sites...

moreover, i could have rushed on here a couple of days back and stated I just saw Olivia on the news in respect to getting Canadian borders open to Haitian refugees, family re-unification peoples, and adoption in progress children as soon as possible.

however, i give a rat's ass that she is NDP, I am just glad someone in Ottawa is doing something to further this obvious action. It did not even strike me for a moment to be "proud"  that she was 'NDP' and doing so.

 

 

 

Then why are you even in this thread, if you don't care about what the NDP (or any other "damn party") has to say about Haiti?  What made you decide to click on "NDP and Haiti" on babble to see what people were saying if it was the very last thing you'd ever think of discussing at a time like this?

My point is - this is a political discussion forum.  People talk politics here, when they have some free time that they're not using to save the world in other ways.  So if you think it's such a huge waste of time and so "sickening" to discuss what the NDP response should be to this disaster, then what are you doing discussing it?

If you're just here to wag your finger at people and tell them that discussing the NDP's response to this "sickens" you, then great.  Noted.  Thanks for sharing.

No one wants you to feel sick, certainly, but unfortunately, we can't help it if you click on a thread that sickens you.

Stockholm, please read for comprehension.

No one is saying that American imperialism "caused the earthquake". They're saying that poverty is the reason the earthquake was so devastating, and you can lay the poverty directly at the doorsteps of those who supported the overthrow of democratic governments in Haiti, and who supported Haiti being crushed under debt.

Haitian earthquake: Made in the USA

No, actually, there WON'T be lots of time to discuss the reasons why this happened, because no one will give a shit later, certainly not the media or politicians, anyhow.  Now IS the time to discuss this.

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How did Haiti get so poor? Despite a century of American colonialism, occupation, and propping up corrupt dictators? Even though the CIA staged coups d'état against every democratically elected president they ever had?

It's an important question. An earthquake isn't just an earthquake. The same 7.0 tremor hitting San Francisco wouldn't kill nearly as many people as in Port-au-Prince."Looking at the pictures, essentially it looks as if (the buildings are of) breezeblock or cinderblock construction, and what you need in an earthquake zone is metal bars that connect the blocks so that they stay together when they get shaken," notes Sandy Steacey, director of the Environmental Science Research Institute at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland. "In a wealthy country with good seismic building codes that are enforced, you would have some damage, but not very much."

When a pile of cinderblocks falls on you, your odds of survival are long. Even if you miraculously survive, a poor country like Haiti doesn't have the equipment, communications infrastructure or emergency service personnel to pull you out of the rubble in time. And if your neighbors get you out, there's no ambulance to take you to the hospital--or doctor to treat you once you get there.

Earthquakes are random events. How many people they kill is predetermined. In Haiti this week, don't blame tectonic plates. Ninety-nine percent of the death toll is attributable to poverty.

So the question is relevant. How'd Haiti become so poor?

 

call it fascination with a train wreck sydrome...

 

but point taken, why bother checking to see if it is the usual partisan bashers, gnashing their teeth over sfa, or indeed make political commentary about those being partisan on the backs of those already exploited and in great misery, i should have just taken it for granted that it was so...next time.

 

meanwhile as I am here and involved, IMV, the analysis of why Haiti is in this mess, would be grossly inappropriate in the NDP's statement on what their actions are in respect to aleviating immediate plights, and what people can do, in the first days in an emergency.

 

The horses are out of the barn on that score, and what needs to be done is immediate efforts and direction, not posturings on why the horses got out of the barn.

 

going to put it in blunter and more personal analogy terms....about how inappropriate it would have been for the NDP's first statement to ramble into the area of how Haiti got so poor.

So here goes my direct analogy....I believe that the death of my granddaughter's father  was directly attributable to his parent's failure to support his alcohol addictions treatment, because they did not want the commuity at large to know of their son's plight, as they thought they would lose face and status.

 

Should I have sent them a Sympathy card stating it was their damn fault he was dead? Or stood up at the service and railed about  the fact that had they gotten help for him,  an dbeen less shallow, perhaps his daughter would not now be without a father?

Of course the answer is a resounding, No!

There is a time and place for commentary...and the time now is to get real political action happening to help Haitians in their plight, not standing around pointing fingers at any political party's failure to give "class analysis" about a current and developing human tragedy of epic proportions in their initial statement on what happened and call to action.

 

 

I'm sorry, have there been subsequent statements about what happened?  Clearly no one expects an initial response to be analysis - you want to give help immediately.

But this happened a week ago.  So what's wrong with analysis?  I just did a search for "Haiti" on the NDP web site, and there seems to be a stronger focus on speeding up the adoption process for Haitian children to Canadian families than getting aid to Haiti anyhow.

And in general (not that the NDP is doing this, necessarily), when you're giving immediate help, patting yourself on the back about how benevolent Canada is for doing so is just as much political commentary (by sweeping under the rug our complicity in the death toll) as it would be to state that Canada is simply giving what it owes, and not nearly enough either.

There's a difference between geopolitical analysis and domestic partisan positioning, when juxtaposed against the literal backdrop of mountains of dead people, the most impoverished in the hemisphere.  Haven't they been exploited enough?

While some might think it gauche to point out that Haiti's suffering is a direct result of Canadian and American politics, it is as odious as it is audacious and paradoxical to claim that we shouldn't stop the source of Haiti's suffering because of their suffering.

Because its crass speculation as to numbers of dead and how many would have survived.  That 90% survival figure from a 7.0 magnitude plus earthquake in a densely populated zone, (any zone really) in that commondreams link should have been hosed off a little before publishing it, after having been pulled from someone's ass.  There's a time for everything you know..like maybe shortly after they've recovered and buried the 10's of thousands of still unaccounted for bodies.  Perhaps the opportunism at that point wouldn't stink nearly as bad.

Remind you are right there is never a right time to talk about real change.  Courage my friends tis not to late to salvage some little thing since building a better world is impossible.  You and Fidel are doing an excellent job telling all and sundry that there is no power in parliament. 

I don't believe that a privileged Canadian who wants a poster Haitian children should be the focus of anything.  Why have we not sent teams of Doctor's instead of troops to augment the American force.  Why was the Vancouver Search and Rescue team stood down?  If the NDP wants to relevant then maybe they should leave the stories about children waiting to be rescued to the MSM and the Conservatives and start talking about all the rest of the Haitians who have not been "adopted."  The NDP might want to talk about the command structure of our military.  What is the chain of command?  Are we sending supplementary troops to the US military presence or are we too be under the UN mission.  There are lots of pressing issues that the NDP needs to focus on.

Offering suggestions to the left party in the House is not necessarily attacking them.  There is also for me and other posters the fact that we expect more from the NDP.  If not them then who will raise the issues.

The objectionable thing about the NDP and Haiti, IMO, is their six years of near silence about the coup and its aftermath. Which is not to say they don't have MPs and lots of members who were concerned and who worked to bring attention to the systematic undermining of Haitian democracy. It is to say the communications staff and the leader's office decided not to make this a priority -- at best.

Does Stockholm really believe that the death toll and the suffering in its aftermath is unrelated to the undermining of the public sector, refusal to raise the minimum wage and campaign of extermination against the party favoured by Haiti's poor majority? I don't know if his assertion is really made in good faith. Take just one example: Aristide, during his second mandate, called on the government of France to repay $21 billion for payments unfairly squeezed from Haiti post-independence. What if, instead of overthrowing Aristide (after in fact witholding aid and loans for years), France had paid this sum or a portion thereof. That would have meant billions of dollars added to the miniscule annual budget of the Haitian government, meaning the possibility of road improvements, higher grade cement for construction, more hospitals, more doctors, more nurses, more emergency vehichles -- in other words, a semblance of a public sector to meet people's needs before, after and during an emergency. It is unarguable that this would have saved lives.

To deny that any of this history, recent and longer-term, has anything to do with the death toll and current suffering really just amounts to an assertion that you don't care.

I would argue that the work that the Canada Haiti Action Network has been doing so valiantly for years is motivated by precisely the same noble sentiments which are motivating people to give generously in this hour of need. To point out the history of Haiti in this context is not to deny the present urgency, but rather to urge that the noble sentiments towards Haiti be extended well into the future. Because, when people really know this country's tragic history they will never again ignore its suffering, and hopefully they will get involved with ongoing solidarity efforts. Because no matter where one is, an injury to one is an injury to all.

 

Is it too soon to talk about the issues raised in this story at The Nation too?
IMF to Haiti: Freeze Public Wages

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...it's also time to stop having a conversation about charity and start having a conversation about justice--about recovery, responsibility and fairness. What the world should be pondering instead is: What is Haiti owed?

Haiti's vulnerability to natural disasters, its food shortages, poverty, deforestation and lack of infrastructure, are not accidental. To say that it is the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere is to miss the point; Haiti was made poor--by France, the United States, Great Britain, other Western powers and by the IMF and the World Bank.

Now, in its attempts to help Haiti, the IMF is pursuing the same kinds of policies that made Haiti a geography of precariousness even before the quake. To great fanfare, the IMF announced a new $100 million loan to Haiti on Thursday. In one crucial way, the loan is a good thing; Haiti is in dire straits and needs a massive cash infusion. But the new loan was made through the IMF's extended credit facility, to which Haiti already has $165 million in debt. Debt relief activists tell me that these loans came with conditions, including raising prices for electricity, refusing pay increases to all public employees except those making minimum wage and keeping inflation low. They say that the new loans would impose these same conditions. In other words, in the face of this latest tragedy, the IMF is still using crisis and debt as leverage to compel neoliberal reforms.

How very generous of the IMF. $100,000,000. 

The US has spent over $200,000,000,000 on Afghanistan and over $700,000,000,000 on Iraq. Canada has spent more than $10,000,000,000 on Afghanistan. That's 100 times as much as the total IMF conditional "loan". There's money galore to be spent on killing people and trying to mould nations in our image. 

Yes, I can just imagine the scene. The Presidents of the US and France and the PM of Canada and the Bilderberg group and maybe Queen Elizabeth all having secret meetings where the number 1 issue on the agenda is "How do we make sure that Haiti stays as poor as possible to punish them for liberating themselves from slavery 200 years ago?".

I'm surprised you don't think the British are conspiring to make the US economy collapse because the 13 colonies had the nerve to declare their independence from the UK in 1776!

Just a bit more about "the value of Haiti" [re:Stockholm's post here] from a Global Research article.

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"... the average wage in Haiti is "$1 a day" which even with all the other costs thrown in still totals only $2 per day. And by the strategic location of textile plants in the Dominican Republic, the two countries will be forced to compete with each other in keeping wages as low as possible."

Does your kid wear Walt Disney pajamas?

Because if he/she does, the chances are they're made in Haiti at the US-owned plant of L.V. Miles which manufactures them under license for the Walt Disney corporation:

"In one day [in 1996]...20 workers earn $66.60, and together they produce 1,000 pairs of pajamas. That is $11,970 worth of pajamas for $66.60. Less than seven cents per pair goes to pay the workers who produced it."

This is from a report written by the National Labour Commission, a US NGO funded by trade unions investigating the conditions of workers in countries like Haiti. The report goes on to say that,

"In 1994, Wal-Mart made a profit of $2.681 billion, Disney made $1.1 billion. The workers who sew the clothes for these companies are, in many cases, making less than $312 a year working full time. Basic respect for the law is not too much to ask.

"Today's minimum wage has less buying power than before Aristide's election in December 1990. Since 1980, its real value has declined some 50 percent. It is the lowest in the entire Caribbean area and provides less than 60 percent of the barest needs for a family of five. A more usual wage of $1 a day, or $6 for a standard workweek, provides about one- quarter of these minimum needs.

"For U.S. multinational corporations, Aristide's support for an increase in the minimum wage was a good enough reason for overthrowing him. Andrew Postal, president of Judy Bond, a U.S. women's apparel maker with plants in Haiti, said of Aristide, "It was not a business-friendly government.""

The report says that after Artistide's ouster "and while the Haitian military was murdering 3,000 to 5,000 people, Postal went right on producing in Haiti and exporting to the U.S. despite the OAS embargo."

Link to this article> http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17044

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Besides that issue, I just want to say Fidel and others have posted some great info about the Haitian catastrophe, then and now.

The issue of "USA blocking aid" is credible. Disaster capitalism is in full swing there, and we will see that more clearly by summer of 2010.

 Low wages, no unions, no rights, no complaints from the workers who "have to be gratefull to be alive" after the earthquake, and who "have to be gratefull for any wages at all" after the USA rescued [cough cough] them from the rubble.

And oh ya - that $100 Million IMF loan should keep them subjegated for another decade at least ["conditional" loans by the IMF in Africa usually demand that governments not spend money on social programs, and if Haiti does not have robust social program spending the citizens will not be in any position to exersize their rights or even to demand them]

 

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What I think, Stockholm, is that the west perpetrated a big lie during the cold war era about what capitalism is capable of providing the rest of the world in terms of standard of living.

Capitalism did not deliver on its trickle down promises built upon deregulation, privatization, shrinking democracy and cuts to social services. Not in the global north or the global south. They made themselves extraordinarily more rich and throw a few cents at Haiti and expect to be congratulated for their generosity. 

New Point: Check out Duncan Cameron's piece on rabble.ca today - Haiti calls for help -

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Activists for disaster relief should make immediate forgiveness of every dollar of the Haitian debt a top priority. Reparations for past injustices should be part of any long term international plan for Haiti.

Maybe that's something the NDP could get behind? Or is it too soon? 

this is the biggest thread on Haiti at the moment, so I thought I would add a sidebar on the country.

 

It seems that the USS Carl Vinson will be floating off the waters of Haiti - wait for it - to assist in the aid efforts ... AND TO MAKE SURE THAT HAITIAN REFUGEES DON'T MAKE IT TO THE US.(place clever observation about US blockade of Cuba here)

Ooh RAh! What the Lord (I mean the USA) gives with one hand he taketh away with the other.

Supplemental: I wonder what new public institution will be privatized in Haiti in the current crises as another example of what Naomi Kline called the shock doctrine? Maybe the government itself? Any ideas?

Polunatic2 wrote:

Haiti has been THE poorest country in the Western hemisphere for a long, long time. Why try to downplay that by saying that poverty is everywhere? The Haitian people continue to be punished for having the nerve to liberate themselves from slavery more than 200 years ago. 

You hit the nail right on the head.

Haiti has been punished for the last two centuries by western colonialists and imperialists for having the audacity to engage in the first successful slave revolt.  It was the Haitian revolutionaries who aided Simon Bolivar in liberating Colombia and Venezuela from Spanish colonial rule.

Since then, the Haitian people have been made to pay and pay and pay.

That's why this earthquake has been so catastrophic.   IMHO it's the responsibility of folks who call themselves progressives and/or leftists to raise these issues...to talk about solidarity and not just charity.