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Apologies for length and cross-posting - worth a read..
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html
Securing Disaster in Haiti
by Peter Hallward
Nine days after the devastating earthquake that struck
Haiti on 12 January 2010, it's now clear that the initial
phase of the U.S.-led relief operation has conformed to
the three fundamental tendencies that have shaped the more
general course of the island's recent history. It has
adopted military priorities and strategies. It has
sidelined Haiti's own leaders and government, and ignored
the needs of the majority of its people. And it has
proceeded in ways that reinforce the already harrowing gap
between rich and poor. All three tendencies aren't just
connected, they are mutually reinforcing. These same
tendencies will continue to govern the imminent
reconstruction effort as well, unless determined political
action is taken to counteract them.
I
Haiti is not only one of the poorest countries in the
world, it is also one of the most polarised and unequal in
its disparities in wealth and access to political
power.1 A small clique of rich and well-connected
families continues to dominate the country and its economy
while more than half the population, according to the IMF,
survive on a household income of around 44 US pennies per
day.2
Mass destitution has grown far more severe in recent
decades. Starting in the 1970s, internationally imposed
neo-liberal 'adjustments' and austerity measures finally
succeeded in doing what no Haitian government had managed
to do since winning independence in 1804: in order to set
the country on the road towards 'economic development',
they have driven large numbers of small farmers off their
land and into densely crowded urban slums. A small
minority of these internal refugees may be lucky enough to
find sweatshop jobs that pay the lowest wages in the
region. These wages currently average $2 or $3 a day; in
real terms they are worth less than a quarter of their
1980 value.
Haiti's tiny elite owes its privileges to exclusion,
exploitation and violence, and it is only violence that
allows it to retain them. For much of the last century,
Haiti's military and paramilitary forces (with substantial
amounts of US support) were able to preserve these
privileges on their own. Over the course of the 1980s,
however, it started to look as if local military
repression might no longer be up to the job. A massive
and courageous popular mobilisation (known as Lavalas)
culminated in 1990 with the landslide election of the
liberation theologian Jean-Bertrand Aristide as president.
Large numbers of ordinary people began to participate in
the political system for the first time, and as political
scientist Robert Fatton remembers, 'panic seized the
dominant class. It dreaded living in close proximity to
la populace and barricaded itself against Lavalas.'3
Nine months later, the army dealt with this popular threat
in the time-honoured way, with a coup d'état. Over the
next three years, around 4,000 Aristide supporters were
killed.
However, when the US eventually allowed Aristide to return
in October 1994, he took a surprising and unprecedented
step: he abolished the army that had deposed him. As
human rights lawyer Brian Concannon (director of the
Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti) observed a
few years later, 'it is impossible to overestimate the
impact of this accomplishment. It has been called the
greatest human rights development in Haiti since
emancipation, and is wildly popular.'4 In 2000, the
Haitian electorate gave Aristide a second overwhelming
mandate when his party (Fanmi Lavalas) won more than 90%
of the seats in parliament.
II
More than anything else, what has happened in Haiti since
1990 should be understood as the progressive clarification
of this basic dichotomy -- democracy or the army.
Unadulterated democracy might one day allow the interests
of the numerical majority to prevail, and thereby
challenge the privileges of the elite. In 2000, such a
challenge became a genuine possibility: the overwhelming
victory of Fanmi Lavalas, at all levels of government,
raised the prospect of genuine political change in a
context in which there was no obvious extra-political
mechanism -- no army -- to prevent it.
In order to avoid this outcome, the main strategy of
Haiti's little ruling class has been to redefine political
questions in terms of 'stability' and 'security', and in
particular the security of property and investments. Mere
numbers may well win an election or sustain a popular
movement but as everyone knows, only an army is equipped
to deal with insecurity. The well-armed 'friend of Haiti'
that is the United States knows this better than anyone
else.
As soon as Aristide was re-elected, a systematic
international campaign to bankrupt and destabilise his
second government set the stage for a paramilitary
insurrection and a further coup d'état, and in 2004,
thousands of US troops again invaded Haiti (just as they
first did back in 1915) in order to 'restore stability and
security' to their 'troubled island neighbour.' An
expensive and long-term UN 'stabilisation mission' staffed
by 9,000 heavily armed troops soon took over the job of
helping to pacify the population and criminalise the
resistance. By the end of 2006, thousands more Aristide
supporters had been killed.
Over the course of 2009, a suitably stabilised Haitian
government agreed to persevere with the privatisation of
the country's remaining public assets,5 veto a proposal to
increase minimum wages to $5 a day, and to bar Fanmi
Lavalas (and several other political parties) from
participating in the next round of legislative elections.
When it comes to providing stability, today's UN troops
are clearly a big improvement over the old indigenous
alternative. If things get so unstable that even the
ground begins to shake, however, there's still nothing
that can beat the world's leading provider of peace and
security.
III
In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake that struck
on 12 January 2010, it might have seemed hard to counter
arguments in favour of allowing the US military, with its
'unrivalled logistical capability', to take de facto
control of such a massive relief operation. Weary of bad
press in Iraq and Afghanistan, US commanders also seemed
glad of this unexpected opportunity to rebrand their armed
forces as angels of mercy. As usual, the Haitian
government was instructed to be grateful for whatever help
it could get.
That was before US commanders actively began -- the day
after the earthquake struck -- to divert aid away from the
disaster zone.
As soon as the US air force took control of Haitian
airspace, on Wednesday 13 January, they explicitly
prioritised military over humanitarian flights. Although
most reports from Port-au-Prince emphasised remarkable
levels of patience and solidarity on the streets, US
commanders made fears of popular unrest and insecurity
their number one concern. Their first priority was to
avoid what the US Air Force Special Command Public Affairs
spokesman (Ty Foster) called another 'Somalia effort'6 --
which is to say, presumably, a situation in which a
humiliated US army might once again risk losing military
control of a 'humanitarian' mission.
As many observers predicted, however, the determination of
US commanders to forestall this risk by privileging guns
and soldiers over doctors and food has only succeeded in
helping to provoke a few occasional bursts of the very
unrest they set out to contain. In order to amass a
sufficiently large amount of soldiers and military
equipment 'on the ground', the US Air Force diverted plane
after plane packed with emergency supplies away from
Port-au-Prince. Among many others, World Food Program
flights were turned away by US commanders on Thursday and
Friday, the New York Times reported, 'so that the United
States could land troops and equipment, and lift Americans
and other foreigners to safety.'7
Many similar flights met a similar fate, right through to
the end of the week. Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) alone
has so far had to watch at least five planeloads of its
medical supplies be turned away.8 On Saturday 16 January,
for instance, 'despite guarantees given by the United
Nations and the US Defense Department, an MSF cargo plane
carrying an inflatable surgical hospital was blocked from
landing in Port-au-Prince and was re-routed to Samana, in
Dominican Republic', delaying its arrival by an additional
24 hours.9 Late on Monday 18 January, MSF 'complained
that one of its cargo planes carrying 12 tonnes of medical
equipment had been turned away three times from
Port-au-Prince airport since Sunday,' despite receiving
'repeated assurances they could land.' By that stage one
group of MSF doctors in Port-au-Prince had been 'forced to
buy a saw in the market to continue the amputations' upon
which the lives of their patients depended.10
While US commanders set about restoring security by
assembling a force of some 14,000 Marines, residents in
some less secure parts of Port-au-Prince soon started to
run out of food and water. On 20 January people sleeping
in one of the largest and most easily accessed of the many
temporary refugee camps in central Port-au-Prince (in
Champs Mars) told writer Tim Schwartz, author of the 2008
book Travesty in Haiti, that 'no relief has arrived; it is
all being delivered on other side of town, by the US
embassy.'11 Telesur reporter Reed Lindsay confirmed on 20
January, a full eight days after the quake, that the
impoverished south-western Port-au-Prince suburb closest
to the earthquake's epicentre, Carrefour, still hadn't
received any food, aid or medical help.12
The BBC's Mark Doyle found the same thing in an eastern
(and less badly affected) suburb. 'Their houses are
destroyed, they have no running water, food prices have
doubled, and they haven't seen a single government
official or foreign aid worker since the earthquake
struck.' Overall, Doyle observed, 'the international
response has been quite pathetic. Some of the aid
agencies are working very hard, but there are two ways of
reporting this kind of thing. One is to hang around with
the aid agencies and hang around with the American
spokespeople at the airport, and you'll hear all sorts of
stories about what's happening. Another way is to drive
almost at random with ordinary people and go and see
what's happening in ordinary places. In virtually every
area I've driven to, ordinary people say that I was the
first foreigner that they'd met.'13
Only a full week after the earthquake did emergency food
supplies even begin the slow journey from the heavily
guarded airport to fourteen 'secure distribution points'
in various parts of the city.14 By that stage, tens of
thousands of Port-au-Prince residents had finally come to
the conclusion that no aid would be forthcoming, and began
to abandon the capital for villages in the countryside.
On Sunday 17 January, Al-Jazeera's correspondent
summarised what many other journalists had been saying all
week. 'Most Haitians have seen little humanitarian aid so
far. What they have seen is guns, and lots of them.
Armoured personnel carriers cruise the streets' and
'inside the well-guarded perimeter [of the airport], the
US has taken control. It looks more like the Green Zone
in Baghdad than a centre for aid distribution.'15 Late on
the same day, the World Food Programme's air logistics
officer Jarry Emmanuel confirmed that most of the 200
flights going in and out of the airport each day were
still being reserved for the US military: 'their
priorities are to secure the country. Ours are to
feed.'16 By Monday 18 January, no matter how many US
embassy or military spokesman insisted that 'we are here
to help' rather than invade, governments as different as
those of France and Venezuela had begun to accuse the US
of effectively 'occupying' the country.17
IV
The US decision to privilege military over humanitarian
traffic at the airport sealed the fate of many thousands
of people abandoned in the rubble of lower Port-au-Prince
and Léogane. In countries all over the world, search and
rescue teams were ready to leave for Haiti within 12 hours
of the disaster. Only a few were able to arrive without
fatal delays -- mainly teams, like those from Venezuela,
Iceland and China, who managed to land while Haitian staff
still retained control of their airport. Some subsequent
arrivals, including a team from the UK, were prevented
from landing with their heavy lending equipment. Others,
like Canada's several Heavy Urban Search Rescue Teams,
were immediately readied but never sent -- the teams were
told to stand down, the Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister
Lawrence Cannon eventually explained, because 'the
government had opted to send Canadian Armed Forces
instead.'18
USAID announced on 19 January that international search
and rescue teams, over the course of the first full week
after the disaster, had managed to save a grand total of
70 people.19 The majority of these people were rescued in
quite specific locations and circumstances.
'Search-and-rescue operations', observed the Washington
Post on 18 January, 'have been intensely focused on
buildings with international aid workers, such as the
crushed U.N. headquarters, and on large hotels with
international clientele.'20 Tim Schwartz spent much of
the first post-quake week as a translator with rescue
workers, and was struck by the fact that most of their
work was confined to places -- the UN's hotel Christophe,
the Montana Hotel, the Caribe supermarket -- that were not
only frequented by foreigners but that could be snugly
enclosed within 'secure perimeters.' Elsewhere, he
observed, UN 'peacekeepers' did their best to make sure
that rescue workers treated onlooking crowds as a source
of potential danger rather than assistance.21
Until the residents of devastated places like Léogane and
Carrefour are somehow able to reassure foreign troops that
they will feel 'secure' when visiting their
neighbourhoods, UN and US commanders clearly prefer to let
them die on their own.
Exactly the same logic has condemned yet more people to
death in and around Port-au-Prince's hospitals. In one of
the most illuminating reports yet filed from the city, on
20 January Democracy Now's Amy Goodman spoke with Dr. Evan
Lyon of Partners in Health/Zanmi Lasante from the General
Hospital, the most important medical centre in the whole
country. Lyon acknowledged there was a need for 'crowd
control, so that the patients are not kept from having
access', but insisted that 'there's no insecurity [. . .
]. I don't know if you guys were out late last night, but
you can hear a pin drop in this city. It's a peaceful
place. There is no war. There is no crisis except the
suffering that's ongoing [. . . ]. The first thing that
[your] listeners need to understand is that there is no
insecurity here. There has not been, and I expect there
will not be.' On the contrary, Lyon explained, 'this
question of security and the rumours of security and the
racism behind the idea of security has been our major
block to getting aid in. The US military has promised us
for several days to bring in machinery, but they've been
listening to this idea that things are insecure, and so we
don't have supplies.' As of 20 January, the hospital
still hadn't received the supplies and medicines needed to
treat many hundreds of dying patients. 'In terms of aid
relief the response has been incredibly slow. There are
teams of surgeons that have been sent to places that were,
quote, "more secure," that have ten or twenty doctors and
ten patients. We have a thousand people on this campus
who are triaged and ready for surgery, but we only have
four working operating rooms, without anaesthesia and
without pain medications.'22
Almost by definition, in post-quake Haiti it seems that
anyone or anything that cannot be enclosed in a 'secure
perimeter' isn't worth saving.
In their occasional forays outside such perimeters,
meanwhile, some Western journalists seemed able to find
plenty of reasons for retreating behind them. Lurid
stories of looting and gangs soon began to lend 'security
experts' like the London-based Stuart Page23 an aura of
apparent authority, when he explained to the BBC's
gullible 'security correspondent' Frank Gardner that 'all
the security gains made in Haiti in the last few years
could now be reversed [. . . ]. The criminal gangs,
totalling some 3,000, are going to exploit the current
humanitarian crisis, to the maximum degree.'24
Another seasoned BBC correspondent, Matt Frei, had a
similar story to tell on 18 January, when he found a few
scavengers sifting through the remains of a central
shopping district. 'Looting is now the only industry
here. Anything will do as a weapon. Everything is now
run by rival armed groups of thugs.' If Haiti is to avoid
anarchy, Frei concluded, 'what may be needed is a full
scale military occupation.'25
Not even former US president (and former Haiti occupier)
Bill Clinton was prepared to go that far. 'Actually',
Clinton told Frei, 'when you think about people who have
lost everything except what they're carrying on their
backs, who not only haven't eaten but probably haven't
slept in four days, and when the sun goes down it's
totally dark and they spend all night long tripping over
bodies living and dead, well, I think they've behaved
quite well [. . . ]. They are astonishing people. How
can they be so calm in the face of such enormous loss of
life and loved ones, and all the physical damage?'26
Reporters able to tell the difference between occasional
and highly localised bursts of foraging and a full-scale
'descent into anarchy' made much the same point all week,
as did dozens of indignant Haitian correspondents. On 17
January, for instance, Ciné Institute director David
Belle tried to counter international misrepresentation.
'I have been told that much US media coverage paints
Haiti as a tinderbox ready to explode. I'm told that lead
stories in major media are of looting, violence and chaos.
There could be nothing further from the truth. I have
travelled the entire city daily since my arrival. The
extent of the damage is absolutely staggering [but. . . ]
NOT ONCE have we witnessed a single act of aggression or
violence [. . . ]. A crippled city of two million awaits
help, medicine, food and water. Most haven't received
any. Haiti can be proud of its survivors. Their dignity
and decency in the face of this tragedy is itself
staggering.'27
As anyone can see, however, dignity and decency are no
substitute for security. No amount of weapons will ever
suffice to reassure those 'fortunate few' whose fortunes
isolate them from the people they exploit. As far as the
people themselves are concerned, 'security is not the
issue', explains Haiti Liberté's Kim Ives. 'We see
throughout Haiti the population themselves organizing
themselves into popular committees to clean up, to pull
out the bodies from the rubble, to build refugee camps, to
set up their security for the refugee camps. This is a
population which is self-sufficient, and it has been
self-sufficient for many years.'28 But while the people
who have lost what little they had have done their best to
cope and regroup, the soldiers sent to 'restore order'
treat them as potential combatants. 'It's just the same
way they reacted after Katrina', concludes Ives. 'The
victims are what's scary. They're black people who, you
know, had the only successful slave revolution in history.
What could be more threatening?'
'According to everyone I spoke with in the centre of the
city', wrote Schwarz on 21 January, 'the violence and gang
stuff is pure BS.' The relentless obsession with
security, agrees Andy Kershaw, is clear proof of the fact
that most foreign soldiers and NGO workers 'haven't a clue
about the country and its people.'29 True to form, within
hours of the earthquake most of the panicked staff in the
US embassy had already been evacuated, and at least one
prominent foreign contractor in the garment sector (the
Canadian firm Gildan Activewear) announced that it would
be shifting production to alternative sewing facilities in
neighbouring countries.30 The price to be paid for such
priorities will not be evenly distributed. Up in the
higher, wealthier and mostly undamaged parts of
Pétionville everyone already knows that it's the local
residents 'who through their government connections,
trading companies and interconnected family businesses'
will once again pocket the lion's share of international
aid and reconstruction money.31
In order to help keep less well-connected families where
they belong, meanwhile, the US Department of Homeland
Security has taken 'unprecedented' emergency measures to
secure the homeland this past week. Operation 'Vigilant
Sentry' will make efficient use of the large naval
flotilla the US has assembled around Port-au-Prince. 'As
well as providing emergency supplies and medical aid',
notes The Daily Telegraph, 'the USS Carl Vinson, along
with a ring of other navy and coast guard vessels, is
acting as a deterrent to Haitians who might be driven to
make the 681 mile sea crossing to Miami.' While Senegal's
president Abdoulaye Wade offered 'voluntary repatriation
to any Haitian that wants to return to [the land of] their
origin', American officials confirmed that they would
continue to apply their long-standing (and thoroughly
illegal) policy with respect to all Haitian refugees and
asylum seekers -- to intercept and repatriate them
automatically, regardless of the circumstances.32
Ever since the quake struck, the US Air Force has taken
the additional precaution of flying a radio-transmitting
cargo plane for five hours a day over large parts of the
country, so as to broadcast a recorded message from
Haiti's ambassador in Washington. 'Don't rush on boats to
leave the country', the message says. 'If you think you
will reach the U. S. and all the doors will be wide open
to you, that's not at all the case. They will intercept
you right on the water and send you back home where you
came from. ' Not even life-threatening injuries are enough
to entitle Haitians to a different sort of American
reception. When the dean of medicine at the University of
Miami arrived to help set up a field hospital by the
airport in Port-au-Prince, he was outraged to find that
most seriously injured people in the city were being
denied the visas they would need to be transferred to
Florida for surgery and treatment. As of 19 January the
State Department had authorised a total of 23 exceptions
to its golden rule of immigration. 'It's beyond insane,'
O'Neill complained. 'It's bureaucracy at its worst. '33
V
This is the fourth time the US has invaded Haiti since
1915. Although each invasion has taken a different form
and responded to a different pretext, all four have been
expressly designed to restore 'stability' and 'security'
to the island. Earthquake-prone Haiti must now be the
most thoroughly stabilised country in the world.
Thousands more foreign security personnel are already on
their way, to guard the teams of foreign reconstruction
and privatisation consultants who in the coming months are
likely to usurp what remains of Haitian sovereignty.
Perhaps some of these guards and consultants will help
their elite clients achieve another long-cherished dream:
the restoration of Haiti's own little army. And perhaps
then, for a short while at least, the inexhaustible source
of 'instability' in Haiti – the ever-nagging threat of
popular political participation and empowerment – may be
securely buried in the rubble of its history.
Notes
1 See Pål Sletten and Willy Egset, Poverty in
Haiti (FAFO, 2004), 9.
2 IMF, Haiti: Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy
Paper (November 2006), 7.
3 Robert Fatton, Haiti's Predatory Republic (Boulder:
Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002), 86-87, 83.
4 Brian Concannon, "Lave Men, Siye Atè: Taking Human
Rights Seriously," in Melinda Miles and Eugenia Charles,
eds., Let Haiti LIVE: Unjust U.S. Policies Toward its
Oldest Neighbor(Coconut Creek FL: Educa Vision, 2004), 92.
5 See for instance Jeb Sprague, "Haiti's
Classquake," HaitiAnalysis, January 19, 2010.
6 BBC Radio 4 News, January 16, 2010, 22:00GMT.
7 Ginger Thompson and Damien Cave, "Officials Strain to
Distribute Aid to Haiti as Violence Rises," New York
Times, January 17, 2010.
8 "Médecins Sans Frontières says its Plane Turned Away
from U.S.-run Airport," Daily Telegraph, January 19, 2010.
9 "Doctors Without Borders Cargo Plane with Full Hospital
and Staff Blocked from Landing in Port-au-Prince," January
18, 2010.
10 "America Sends Paratroopers to Haiti to Help Secure
Aid Lines," The Times, January 20, 2010.
11 Email from Tim Schwartz, January 20, 2010.
12 "No aid [in Carrefour]. In the morning at UN base they
said they would distribute there, but it didn't happen"
(Reed Lindsay, Honor and Respect Foundation Newsletter),
January 20, 2010,http://www.hrfhaiti.org/earthquake/).
Cf. Luis Felipe Lopez, "Town at Epicenter of Quake Stays
in Isolation," The Miami Herald, January 17, 2010.
13 BBC Radio 4, News at Ten, January 18, 2010.
14 Ed Pilkington, "We're Not Here to Fight, U.S. Troops
Insist," The Guardian, January 18, 2010.
15 "Disputes Emerge over Haiti Aid Control," Al Jazeera,
January 17, 2010.
16 Ginger Thompson and Damien Cave, "Officials Strain to
Distribute Aid to Haiti as Violence Rises," New York
Times, January 17, 2010.
17 "Haiti Aid Agencies Warn: Chaotic and Confusing Relief
Effort is Costing Lives," The Guardian, January 18, 2010.
18 Don Peat, "HUSAR Not up to Task, Feds Say: Search and
Rescue Team Told to Stand Down," Toronto Sun, January 17,
2010.
19 USAID, http://www.usaid.gov/helphaiti/index.html,
accessed on January 20, 2010.
20 William Booth, "Haiti's Elite Spared from Much of the
Devastation," Washington Post, January 18, 2010.
21 Tim Schwarz, phone call with the author, January 18,
2010; cf. Tim Schwartz, "Is this Anarchy? Outsiders
Believe this Island Nation is a Land of Bandits. Blame
the NGOs for the 'Looting,'"NOW Toronto, January 21, 2010.
22 "With Foreign Aid Still at a Trickle, Devastated
Port-au-Prince General Hospital Struggles to Meet
Overwhelming Need," Democracy Now! January 20, 2010.
23 Stuart Page is chairman of Page
Group, http://www.pagegroupltd.com/aboutus.html.
24 Gardner then explained that, with the police weakened
by the quake, "Thousands of escaped criminals have
returned to areas they once terrorized, like the slum
district of Cité Soleil [. . .]. Unless the armed
criminals are re-arrested, Haiti's security problems risk
being every bit as bad as they were in 2004" (BBC Radio 4,
Six O'clock News, January 18, 2010). In fact, when some
of these ex-prisoners tried to re-establish themselves in
Cité Soleil in the week after the quake, local residents
promptly chased them out of the district on their own (see
Ed Pilkington and Tom Phillips,"Haiti Escaped Prisoners
Chased Out of Notorious Slum," The Guardian, January 20,
2010; Tom Leonard, "Scenes of Devastation Outside
Port-au-Prince 'Even Worse,'" Daily Telegraph, January 21,
2010).
25 BBC television, Ten O'clock News, January 18, 2010.
26 BBC Radio 4, News at Ten, January 18, 2010. It sounds
as if Clinton, in his role as UN special envoy to Haiti,
may be learning a few things from his deputy -- Zanmi
Lasante's Dr. Paul Farmer.
27 David Belle, January 17, 2010.
28 "Journalist Kim Ives on How Western Domination Has
Undermined Haiti's Ability to Recover from Natural
Devastation," Democracy Now! January 21, 2010. Ives
illustrates the way such community organizations work with
an example from the Delmas 33 neighborhood where he's
staying. "A truckload of food came in in the middle of
the night unannounced. It could have been a melee. The
local popular organization was contacted. They
immediately mobilized their members [. . .]. They lined
up about 600 people who were staying on the soccer field
behind the [Matthew 25] 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 UN. [. . .] These are
things that people can do for themselves and are doing for
themselves." Kershaw makes the same point: "This
self-imposed blockade by bureaucracy is a scandal but
could be easily overcome. The NGOs and the military
should recognize the hysteria over 'security' for what it
is and make use of Haiti's best resource and its most
efficient distribution network: the Haitians themselves.
Stop treating them as children. Or worse. Hand over to
them immediately what they need at the airport. They will
find the means to collect it. Fill up their trucks and
cars with free fuel. Any further restriction on, and
control of, the supply of aid is not only patronizing but
it is in that control and restriction where any 'security
issues' will really lurk. And it is the Haitians who best
know where the aid is needed" (Andy Kershaw, "Stop
Treating these People Like Savages," The Independent,
January 21, 2010).
29 Andy Kershaw, "Stop Treating these People Like
Savages," The Independent, January 21, 2010
30 Ross Marowits, "Gildan Shifting T-shirt Production
Outside Haiti to Ensure Adequate Supply," The Canadian
Press, January 13, 2010.
31 William Booth, "Haiti's Elite Spared from Much of the
Devastation," Washington Post, January 18, 2010.
32 Bruno Waterfield, "U.S. Ships Blockade Coast to Thwart
Exodus to America," Daily Telegraph, January 19,
2010; "Senegal Offers Land to Haitians," BBC News January
17, 2010.
33 James C. McKinley Jr., "Homeless Haitians Told Not to
Flee to United States," New York Times, January 19, 2010.
Peter Hallward is a Canadian political philosopher. He
is currently a professor of Modern European Philosophy at
Middlesex University. He is the author of Damning the
Flood. This article was first published in Americas
Program Report (under a Creative Commons license)
and Haiti Analysis on 22 January 2010.
URL: mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/hallward240110.html
--
Dr Jon Cloke
Lecturer
Geography Department
Loughborough University
Loughborough LE11 3TU
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Tel: 00 44 07984 813681
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