- In her book, "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster
Capitalism," Naomi Klein explores the myth of free market democracy,
explaining how neoliberalism dominates the world with America its main
exponent exploiting security threats, terror attacks, economic meltdowns,
competing ideologies, tectonic political or economic shifts, and natural
disasters to impose its will everywhere.
-
- As a result, wars are waged, social services cut, public
ones privatized, and freedom sacrificed when people are too distracted,
cowed or in duress to object. Disaster capitalism is triumphant everywhere
from post-Soviet Russia to post-apartheid South Africa, occupied Iraq and
Afghanistan, Honduras before and after the US-instigated coup, post-tsunami
Sri Lanka and Aceh, Indonesia, New Orleans post-Katrina, and now heading
to Haiti full-throttle after its greatest ever catastrophe. The same scheme
always repeats, exploiting people for profits, the prevailing neoliberal
idea that "there is no alternative" so grab all you can.
-
- On Her web site, Klein headlines a "Haiti Disaster
Capitalism Alert: Stop Them Before They Shock Again," then quotes
the extremist Heritage Foundation saying:
-
- "In addition to providing immediate humanitarian
assistance, the US response to the tragic Haiti earthquake offers opportunities
to re-shape Haiti's long-dysfunctional government and economy as well as
to improve the public image of the United States in the region."
-
- Heritage notes "Things to Remember While Helping
Haiti," itemized briefly below:
-
- -- be bold and decisive;
-
- -- mobilize US civilian and military capabilities "for
short-term rescue and relief and long-term recovery and reform;"
-
- -- US military forces should play an active role interdicting
"cocaine to Haiti and Dominican Republic from the Venezuelan coast
and counter ongoing efforts of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to destabilize
the island of Hispaniola;"
-
- -- US Coast Guard vessels should stop Haitians from trying
"to enter the US illegally;"
-
- -- Congress should authorize "assistance, trade
and reconstruction efforts;" and
-
- -- US diplomacy should "counter the negative propaganda
certain to emanate from the Castro-Chavez camp (to) demonstrate that the
US's involvement in the Caribbean remains a powerful force for good in
the Americas and around the globe."
-
- Heritage is an imperial tool advocating predation, exploitation,
and Haitian redevelopment for profit, not for desperate people to repair
their lives. It disdains democratic freedoms, social justice, and envisions
a global economy "where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil
society flourish" solely for the privileged, the chosen few, not the
disadvantaged or greater majority.
-
- It's for free market plunder, regulatory freedom, tax
cuts for the rich, exploiting the majority, corporate handouts, and militarized
control for enforcement. It supports the Bilderberg idea of a global classless
society - a New World Order with rulers and serfs, no middle class, no
unions, no democracy, no equity or justice, just empowered oligarchs, freed
to do as they please under a universal legal system benefitting them.
-
- For the moment, their focus is Haiti, ripe for plunder,
like the second tsunami that hit coastal Sri Lankans. The December 2004
one took 250,000 lives and left 2.5 million homeless throughout the region.
Klein explained the aftermath at Arugam Bay, "a fishing and faded
resort village" on Sri Lanka's east coast that was showcased to "build
back better." Not for villagers, for developers, hoteliers, and other
business interests to exploit. After the disaster, they had a blank slate
for what the tourist industry long wanted - "a pristine beach (on
prime real estate), scrubbed clean of all the messy signs of people working,
a vacation Eden. It was the same up and down the coast once rubble was
cleared....paradise" given the profit potential.
-
- New rules forbade coastal homes, so a buffer zone was
imposed to insure it. Beaches were off-limits. Displaced Sri Lankans were
shoved into grim barracks, and "menacing, machine-gun-wielding soldiers"
patrolled to keep them there.
-
- Tourist operators, however, were welcomed and encouraged
to build on oceanfront land - to transform the former fishing village into
a "high-end boutique tourism destination (with) five-star resorts,
luxury chalets, (and even a) floatplane pier and helipad."
-
- It was to be a model for transforming around 30 similar
zones into a South Asian Riviera to let Sri Lanka reenter the world economy
as one of the last remaining uncolonized places globalization hadn't touched.
High-end tourism was the ticket - to provide a luxury destination for the
rich once a few changes were made. Government land was opened to private
buyers. Labor laws were relaxed or eliminated. Modern infrastructure would
be built, and public opposition suppressed to let plans proceed unimpeded.
-
- The same scheme followed Hurricane Mitch in October 1998
when Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua were hardest hit. In Sri Lanka,
Washington took the Mitch model to the next level - beyond individuals
to corporate control over reconstruction. Business ran everything. Affected
people were shut out. Klein called it a new type corporate coup mother
nature made possible. Now again in Haiti with an idea of what's coming.
-
- Powerful business interests constructed a blueprint from
housing to hotels to highways and other needed infrastructure. Disaster
relief went for development. Victims got nothing and were consigned to
permanent shantytowns like the kinds in most Global South cities and Global
North inner ones. Aceh and other affected areas adopted the same model.
-
- A year after the tsunami, the NGO Action Aid surveyed
the results in five Asian countries and found the same pattern - residents
barred from rebuilding and living in militarized camps, while developers
were given generous incentives. Lost was their way of life forever.
-
- The same scheme played out in New Orleans with unfettered
capitalism given free reign. With considerable Bush administration help,
mother nature gave corporate predators a golden opportunity for plunder.
Prevailing wage rates for federally funded or assisted construction projects
were suspended. So were environmental regulations in an already polluted
area, enough to be designated a superfund site or toxic waste dump. Instead,
redevelopment was planned.
-
- As a previous article explained, New Orleans had ample
warning but was unprepared. The city is shaped like a bowl, lies below
sea level, and its Gulf coast is vulnerable. As a result, the inevitable
happened, affecting the city's least advantaged - the majority black population
targeted for removal and needing only an excuse to do it. The storm wiped
out public housing and erased communities, letting developers build upscale
condos and other high-profit projects on choice city land.
-
- It was right out of the Chicago School's play book, what
economist Milton Friedman articulated in his 1962 book, "Capitalism
and Freedom." His thesis:
-
- "only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces
real change. When a crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on
the ideas that are lying around...our basic function (is) to develop alternatives
to existing policies (and be ready to roll them out when the) impossible
becomes the politically inevitable."
-
- Friedman believed that government's sole function is
"to protect our freedom from (outside) enemies (and) our fellow-citizens.
(It's to) preserve law and order (as well as) enforce private contracts,
(safeguard private property and) foster competitive markets."
-
- Everything else in public hands is socialism, an ideology
he called blasphemous. He said markets work best unfettered of rules, regulations,
onerous taxes, trade barriers, "entrenched interests" and human
interference, and the best government is practically none - the wild west
because, in his view, anything government does business does better so
let it. Ideas about democracy, social justice, and a caring society were
verboten because they interfere with free-wheeling capitalism.
-
- He said public wealth should be in private hands, profit
accumulation unrestrained, corporate taxes abolished, and social services
curtailed or ended. He believed "economic freedom is an end to itself
(and) an indispensable means toward (achieving) political freedom."
He opposed the minimum wage, unions, market interference, an egalitarian
society, and called Social Security "the biggest Ponzi scheme on earth."
He supported a flat tax favoring the rich, and believed everyone should
have to rely on their own resources to get by.
-
- In a word, Friedmanomics preaches unrestrained market
fundamentalism. "Free to choose," he said with no regard for
human needs and rights. For him and his followers, economic freedom is
the be-all-and-end-all under limited government, the marketplace being
the master.
-
- Applied to New Orleans, it meant permanent changes, including
removing public housing, developing upscale properties in its place, privatizing
schools, and destroying a way of life for thousands of disadvantaged blacks
expelled from their communities and not allowed back.
-
- Klein called Friedman's thesis "the shock doctrine."
Applied to Russia, Eastern Europe and other developing states, it was shock
therapy. For affected people, it was economic and social disaster under
Friedman's prescription for mass-privatizations, deregulation, unrestricted
free market predation, deep social spending cuts, and harsh crackdowns
against resisters. It's disaster capitalism, business is booming, and Haitians
will soon feel its full fury under military occupation.
-
- Haiti - Beleaguered, Occupied, and Stricken by a Disaster
of Biblical Proportions
-
- Since the 19th century, America dominated Haiti. Before
the quake, a proxy paramilitary Blue Helmet force occupied the country,
dispatched not for peacekeeping but iron-grip control. Worse still, it
was the first time ever that UN forces supported a coup d'etat government,
the one Washington installed after US Marines kidnapped President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, forcibly exiled him to Africa, and ended the political, economic
and social reforms he instituted - in areas of health, education, justice
and human rights. Ever since, conditions for Haitians have been nightmarish,
and now the quake and further misery ahead from the Pentagon's iron fist
and greater than ever exploitation.
-
- Obama's top priority is control, underway immediately
after the Pentagon took over the Port-au-Prince airport, reopened it after
its brief closure, and set up a temporary air traffic control center. Military
personnel now decide what gets in or out, what's delivered, how fast, and
according to unconfirmed reports, they slowed arriving search and rescue
equipment, supplies, and personnel, except for what other countries managed
to send in types and amounts way short of what's needed. As a result, trapped
Haitians perished, whereas a concentrated, sustained airlift, including
heavy earthmoving and other equipment, might have saved hundreds or thousands
more lives.
-
- The 1948 - 49 Berlin airlift showed how. For nearly 11
months, western allies delivered what rose to a daily average of 5,500
tons, providing vital supplies for the city's two million people. Today,
the Pentagon has far greater capabilities. If ordered, massive amounts
of virtually everything could be expedited, including heavy earthmoving
equipment and teams of experts for every imaginable need. The result would
have been vast numbers more lives saved, now perished because little was
done to help, except for heroic volunteers providing food, water, and medical
care, and Haitians who dug out survivors with small implements and their
bare hands.
-
- On January 15, Reuters reported that the Port-au-Prince
9,000-foot runway escaped serious damage and could handle big cargo planes
easily. Immediately, food, water, medicine, rescue crews, and other specialists
began arriving from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, China, and elsewhere, but
very little from America, including vitally needed heavy equipment. Haiti
has very little of what's needed.
-
- Instead, the Pentagon sent in thousands of Marines and
82nd Airborne Division paratroopers (a 10,000 force contingent once in
place), armed killers, not humanitarian personnel and regular supplies
to sustain them. Larger numbers may follow to be supplemented by UN Blue
Helmets and Haitian National Police under Pentagon command. A long-term
commitment for militarized control is planned, not humanitarian relief,
reminiscent of the 20-year 1915 - 1934 period when US Marines occupied
and ravaged Haiti.
-
- Throughout the country, the lives of nine million people
are at stake. Of immediate concern, are the three million in Port-au-Prince
and surroundings, devastated by the quake and unable to sustain themselves
without substantial outside help.
-
- Central also is Haiti's government, now crippled, including
one report saying the senate building collapsed with most of the lawmakers
inside. It's not clear who's alive or dead in either National Assembly
chamber, the cabinet, or other government posts. It hardly matters, however,
under US military control leaving President Rene Preval and Prime Minister
Jean-Max Bellerive mere figureheads.
-
- Once full control is established, the immediate shock
subsides, and the media lose interest, reconstruction will be implemented
for profit, not poor Haitians left on their own in communities like Cite
Soleil and Bel Air or permanently displaced for what developers have in
mind.
-
- Efforts will focus on upscale areas and facilities for
the Pentagon, US officials and selected bureaucrats. Before the quake,
the Preval government was weak, ineffective, and uncaring about Haiti's
vast needs. He effectively ceded power to Washington, the UN, and the large
imperial-chosen NGO presence in the country.
-
- In addition, Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party was banned
from the scheduled February 2010 parliamentary elections (now cancelled
or postponed), and was earlier excluded from the 2009 April and June process
to fill 12 open senate seats, resulting in a turnout below 10%, and mocking
a true democratic process.
-
- Now, millions of Haitians hang by a thread. As one of
them put it, "tout ayiti kraze," the whole country is no more.
The government is inoperative. Port-au-Prince is in shambles. People are
struggling to survive, 100,000 or more likely dead, a toll sure to rise
as disease and depravation claim more. Those in poor communities are on
their own. Rescuers are concentrating on high-profile, well-off areas,
but without earthmoving equipment can do little to save victims. The problem
- Washington obstructionism and indifference to human suffering and need.
-
- On January 15, Al Jazeera reported that aid agencies
are struggling under difficult conditions and inadequate supplies, let
alone how to distribute them throughout the capital. As a result, frustration
is growing with little help, no shelter, decaying bodies still unburied,
the threat of disease, and the stench of death everywhere with no power,
phones, clean water, food, and everything millions need.
-
- Sebastian Walker, Al Jazeera's Port-au-Prince correspondent
said:
-
- "A lot of people have simply grown tired of waiting
for those emergency workers to get to them. Thousands of people are streaming
out of the city towards the provinces to try to find supplies of food and
water, supplies that are running out in the city."
-
- On January 16, Al Jazeera headlined "Haiti: UP to
200,000 feared dead." About 50,000 bodies have been collected, according
to Haiti's interior minister, Paul Antoine Bien-Aime, and he anticipates
"between 100,000 and 200,000 dead in total, although we will never
know the exact number," nor how many more will expire in the weeks
and months ahead, unnoticed and unreported.
-
- On January 17, Al Jazeera headlined, "Aid teams
struggle to help Haitians....amid difficulties in distributing relief supplies
to those who need it most.
-
- Sebastian Walker said delivering supplies stacking up
at the airport has been extremely problematic:
-
- "This comes down to the complex issue of who is
in charge here. The US military has a great deal of control over the number
of flights that are landing here. We heard that a UN flight carrying aid
equipment had to be diverted because the US was landing its own aircraft
there. The question of just who makes the decision over how to distribute
the aid seems to be what is holding up the supplies."
-
- The Pentagon decides, of course, and that's the problem.
Obama also urges "patience," saying "many difficult days
(are) ahead," without explaining his obstructionist uncaring role.
-
- The result is reports like this:
-
- -- from Canada's CBC As It Happens broadcast interview
with an ICRC spokesperson saying he spent the morning of January 15 touring
one of the hardest hit areas, and "In three hours, I didn't see a
single rescue team;"
-
- -- a same day BBC interview with an American Red Cross
spokesperson complained about aid delivery - that arriving planes carried
people, not supplies, and amounts at the airpot weren't being delivered;
-
- - the Canada Haiti Action Network calls Port-au-Prince
a city largely without aid because areas most in need aren't getting it;
further, in nicer neighborhoods, dogs and extraction units arrived, but
90% of them are just sitting around, perhaps because of no earthmoving
equipment to reach victims;
-
- -- another report said a French plane carrying a field
hospital was turned away, then later allowed in; meanwhile, Israel got
carte blanche for its own field hospital, able to handle 500 casualties
daily, so it begs the question - why praise Israel for (selectively) helping
Haitians when it murders Palestinians daily, keeps the West Bank isolated
and locked down, Gaza under siege, and denies critically ill residents
exit permission for treatment unavailable from Strip facilities, leaving
them to perish; and
-
- -- various reports say US forces are preventing flights
from landing; prioritized are landing US troops, repatriating American
nationals, and perhaps starving poor Haitians to death; dozens of French
citizens and dual Haitian-French nationals couldn't leave when their scheduled
flight to Guadeloupe couldn't land; an angry French Secretary of State
for Cooperation, Alain Joyandet, told reporters that he "made an official
complaint to the Americans through the US embassy."
-
- UN Office of Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Report on Haiti Relief
-
- On January 15, OCHA reported as follows:
-
- "Logistics and the lack of transport remain the
key constraints to the delivery of aid. Needs are still being identified
as access becomes possible and as assessments begin to take place.
-
- Displaced populations are currently scattered across
multiple locations where there is open space. Temporary shelters urgently
need to be established.
-
- Fifteen sites have been identified for distribution of
relief items. World Food Program reached 13,000 people today with food,
jerry cans and water purification tablets."
-
- OCHA continued, saying:
-
- "A total of (only) 180 tons of relief supplies have
arrived in-country so far. Operations are heavily constrained due to the
lack of fuel, transport, communications and handling capacity at the airport.
Some flights are being re-routed through Santo Domingo airport (far from
Port-au-Prince in the Dominican Republic) which is also becoming congested."
-
- In its latest January 16 report, OCHA repeated that airport
logistics remain a challenge, the result of re-routed flights, congestion,
lengthy offloading times, the lack of transport and fuel, no storage facility,
and the airport "now packed with goods and teams" not being delivered.
-
- Three million Haitians need help, but the World Food
Program distributed high energy biscuits only to 50,000. Around 50,000
are getting hot meals.
-
- Major health concerns include untreated trauma wounds,
infections, infectious diseases, diarrhea, lack of safe drinking water
and sanitation, and Haitians with pre-existing condition like HIV/AIDS,
diabetes and cancer aren't being treated.
-
- Up to a million people need immediate shelter and non-food
aid, including clean water, blankets, kitchen and hygiene kits, plastic
sheeting and tents.
-
- "As of 16 January it is estimated that fuel for
humanitarian operations will only last 2 to 3 more days before operations
will be forced to cease."
-
- There have only been 58 live rescues so far among the
many thousands trapped beneath or behind rubble. OCHA launched a Flash
Appeal for $575 million "to cover 3 million people severely affected
for six months."
-
- Sixteen EU nations are providing aid but not enough.
America is doing practically nothing.
-
- One nation delivering heroic help is Cuba, but little
about it is reported. Despite its own constraints, it's operated in Haiti
for years, and now has over 400 doctors and healthcare experts delivering
free services. They work every day in 227 of the country's 337 communes.
In addition, Cuban medical schools trained over 400 Haitian doctors, now
working to save lives during the country's gravest crisis. It's no small
achievement that Cuba, blockaded and constrained, is responsible for nearly
1,000 doctors and healthcare providers, all of whom work tirelessly to
save lives and rehabilitate the injured.
-
- According to China's Xinhua News Agency:
-
- "Cuban aid workers have taken charge of (Haiti's)
De la Paz Hospital, since its doctors have not appeared after the quake,"
perhaps because many perished, are wounded, or are trapped beneath or behind
rubble themselves.
-
- Cubans are working despite a lack of everything needed
to provide care except for what its government managed to deliver. Dr.
Carlos Alberto Garcia, coordinator of its medical brigade, said Cuban doctors,
nurses and other health personnel are working non-stop, day and night.
Operating rooms are open 18 hours a day.
-
- Independent reports now say Washington is trying to block
Cuban and Venezuelan aid workers by refusing them landing permission in
Port-au-Prince. The Caribbean Community's emergency aid mission is also
blocked. On January 15, the US State Department confirmed that it signed
two Memoranda of Understanding with the remnants of Haiti's government
putting Washington in charge of all inbound and outbound flights and aid
offloading in the country.
-
- For years, Cuba has sent doctors, nurses and other healthcare
providers to countries in need worldwide, winning hearts and minds for
its free highly professional services. It provides national healthcare
for all its people, and now has about 25,000 doctors in 68 countries. In
addition, over 1,800 doctors from 47 developing states graduate annually
from Cuban medical schools, return home, and provide quality care for their
people.
-
- Major Media Misreporting
-
- Ignoring Haiti's long history as a de facto US colony,
the major media report a sanitized version of today's catastrophe. For
example on January 14, The New York Times cynically editorialized: "Once
again, the world weeps for Haiti." This is the same paper that lied
in a March 1, 2004 editorial after US Marines forcibly exiled Aristide,
saying:
-
- -- he resigned;
-
- -- sending in Marines "was the right thing to do;"
and
-
- -- they only arrived after "Mr. Aristide yielded
power."
-
- It also blamed him for "contribut(ing) significantly
to his own downfall (because of his) increasingly autocratic and lawless
rule," and accused him of manipulating the 2000 legislative elections
and not "deliver(ing) the democracy he promised."
-
- In fact, other than a brief period after its liberating
revolution (1791 - January 1, 2004), the only time Haiti was democratically
governed was under Aristide and during Rene Preval's first term. Aristide,
in fact, was so beloved, he was overwhelmingly reelected in 2000 with a
92% majority and would be equally supported today if allowed to run. In
fact, when he's most needed and wanted, Washington won't let him return.
-
- In media coverage of Haiti's disaster, the greater story
is suppressed, the one that matters, that puts today's tragedy in context:
-
- -- 500 years of repression; slavery under the Spanish,
then French, and since the 19th century as a de facto US colony;
-
- -- deep poverty and human misery, the worst in the hemisphere;
-
- -- despotic rule, occupation, exploitation, starvation,
disease and low life expectancy; and
-
- -- now now a disaster of biblical proportions getting
Times headlines like:
-
- "In Show of Support, Clinton Goes to Haiti"
-
- Omitted was that it was for a brief airport photo op,
America's usual show of indifference to human suffering, in this case,
the result of US imperialism, not as a benefactor the way The Times and
other major media portray.
-
- "Officials Strain to Distribute Aid to Haiti as
Violence Rises"
-
- In fact, Haitians have been remarkably calm, no thanks
to Washington that's slowing aid delivery, providing very little of its
own, and offers little more than militarized occupation, armed killers,
including Xe (formerly Blackwater Worldwide) mercenaries, notoriously savage
brutes.
-
- "Looting Flares Where Authority Breaks Down"
-
- Looting? People are suffering, starving, dying, desperate
because America sends fighters, not food; Marines, not medical aid; combat
killers, not compassion, caring, and kindness; and diplomats, not doctors
or human decency.
-
- "Government Struggles to Exhume Itself"
-
- Calling it "comparatively stable" ignores that
Preval's government is a proxy for US interests and no longer functioning.
Pentagon killers are now in charge.
-
- "Bush, Clinton and Obama Unite to Raise Money for
Haiti"
-
- After the December 2004 tsunami struck East Asia, the
Bush administration spearheaded a similar campaign, raised over $1 billion,
and used it for corporate development, not people needs. Obama backs a
similar scheme (Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund) in a show of contemptible indifference
to human misery and chose two co-conspirators for his plan.
-
- The Bush administration engineered the February 2004
coup ousting Aristide, established police state rule, and immiserated nine
million Haitians. For his part, Clinton kept an iron grip throughout his
presidency instead of supporting Aristide's political, economic and social
reforms.
-
- He's now UN Special Envoy to Haiti heading an Obama administration
neoliberal scheme featuring tourism, textile sweatshops, sweeping privatizations
and deregulation for greater cheap labor exploitation at the expense of
providing essential needs. He orchestrated a plan to turn northern Haiti
into a tourist playground and got Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines to invest
$55 million for a pier in Labadee where the company operates a private
resort and has contributed the largest amount of tourist revenue to the
country since 1986.
-
- More still is planned, including a new international
airport in the north, an expanded free trade zone, a new one in Port-au-Prince,
now delayed, various infrastructure projects, and an alliance with George
Soros' Open Society Institute for a $50 million partnership with Haitian
shipper Gregory Mevs to build a free-trade zone for clothing sweatshops.
- In addition, the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) has
$258 million in commitments, including the Better Work Haiti and HOPE II
projects, taking advantage of duty-free Haitian apparel exports to America
to encourage greater sweatshop proliferation.
-
- According to TransAfrica's founder Randall Robinson:
-
- "That isn't the kind of investment that Haiti needs.
It needs capital investment. It needs investment so that it can be self-sufficient.
It needs investment so that it can feed itself." It also needs debt
relief, not another $100 million the IMF just announced adding more to
a $1.2 billion burden.
-
- Above all, Haiti needs democratic governance freed from
US control, military occupation, and the kind of oppression it's endured
for centuries so its people can breathe free.
-
- It doesn't need two past and a current US president allied
with Haiti's elites, ignoring economic justice, exploiting Haitian labor,
ignoring overwhelming human desperation, militarizing the country, crushing
resistance if it arises, and implementing a disaster capitalism agenda
at the expense of essential human needs, rights and freedoms.
-
- The only good new is that the Obama administration granted
undocumented Haitians Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 18 months. They
can now work legally and send remittances to family members. It affects
30,000 ordered deported and all non-US citizens.
-
- During the Bush administration and throughout Obama's
first year in office, repeated calls for it were refused. Now after 80
representatives and 18 senators, Republicans and Democrats, and the conference
of Roman Catholic bishops sent appeals, Obama relented for Haitians in
America as of January 12. New arrivals will be deported unlike Cubans under
the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act (as amended), a "wet foot/dry foot"
policy under which those interdicted at sea are returned home, but others
reaching shore are inspected for entry, then nearly always allowed to stay.
-
- TPS aside, Haiti faces crushing burdens - deep poverty,
vast unemployment, overwhelming human needs, severe repression, poor governance,
Washington dominance, a burdensome debt, and much more before the January
12 quake. Now the disaster, militarization by the Pentagon, and disaster
capitalism soon arriving besides what's already profiteering. It's been
Haiti's plight for generations, the poorest hemispheric nation in the area
most under Washington's iron grip and paying dearly for the privilege.
-
- Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre
for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at <mailto:lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net>lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
-
- Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and
listen to the Lendman News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday
at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished
guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy
listening.
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