I watched some of the Sunday morning news shows. Every American spokesperson said that the earthquake and aftermath in Haiti is "a disaster of epic proportions." I mean they used those exact words. Precisely. Like somebody handed out orders: Say this and nothing else.
One of the international aid group representatives who apparently did not get the memo was interviewed at the airport in Port au Prince. He said that all aid being flown into the country had been stopped, and everything was being turned over to the U.S. military which was monopolizing the airport landing for the purpose of only bringing in more U.S. military and equipment. Almost like they're planning to take over the country or at least the city.
Doctors Without Borders tried to bring in a mobile hospital unit this morning, which folds up to the size of a desk, can be easily carried anywhere then is inflated and creates a hospital. The U.S. military would not allow them to land, and diverted their flight, even knowing that it included critical equipment necessary to save the lives of Haitians. Instead of medical help and doctors, the U.S. Military is using the airport to bring in weapons to be used against the people of Haiti.
Then some American military guy was interviewed at the airport, and after saying that this was "a disaster of epic proportions," the reporter asked him how many marines are being brought in, and how long do they plan to stay. He said 10,000 Marines immediately, maybe more to come, and they will stay until their "mission" is completed. And then he said: The Haitian government has requested that the marines occupy their nation.
The American spokespeople keep saying that everything is being directed by the GOVERNMENT OF HAITI. But when the reporters ask: what government? Everybody was killed. The Americans reply: the president. Mr. Puppet.
If aid is delayed long enough, here are the benefits to the neo-liberal and neo-conservative coalition represented by Bill Clinton and his stupid friend George W. Bush: lots of Haitians die, and lots more leave the city on foot in one of those death-marches that history will report. Probably on PBS, in some "special" long after we're all dead.
Get rid of the people, level the city, build luxury condos for non-Haitians, pass new laws (they'll just copy the set of laws that Bremer enacted when he pretended to be the leader of Iraq), privatize everything (all the beachfront land, probably all of Port au Prince will be sold at auction and purchased by private equity and hedge fund scum), the water rights will be turned over to private developers, the country will be contractually bound to only buy and use Monsanto Frankenseed genetically modified food and to pay Monsanto a royalty for every morsel eaten. And I'll bet some kind of private educational "Christian" school system will be set up and run by Pat Robertson.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
Miscellaneous Friday: Haiti, Racism, Failure
What The Hell Are They Waiting For?
We're now approaching 72 hours since Haiti experienced a 7.0 earthquake (because it was so close to the surface, seismic specialists say it was more like a 9.0 out of a total possible 10.0 on the richter scale). The prevailing wisdom is that people begin to die off in large numbers if they do not receive food, water, and medical help within 72 hours. Relief workers from nations around the world have flown in rescue and search teams, food, water, doctors, medical supplies, all to help the people in Port au Prince Haiti who have been suffering for 72 hours, many of whom are buried inside buildings but might be saved, many of whom have crushed intestines and eyes and limbs. They need help. What the hell are they waiting for?
As far as I can see, Obama has done nothing more for the people of Haiti during the first 72 hours than George W. Bush did for the people of New Orleans during the first 72 hours after their disaster. Maybe Obama has given a few sincere-looking speeches, but he has done nothing to help those people. Doing something means more than just giving a speech. Why don't Barack and Michele take Air Force One and fly over the rubble of that poor island, look out the window, put a "sincere and concerned" look on their faces, and use it as a photo op?
Bill The Ladies Man And His Stupid Friend
Bill Clinton, the philandering nafta guy who sent all our jobs to third world countries then invested in third world countries to reap the bounty of his treason, has been made co-responsible with that moron and murderer George W. Bush to handle the relief efforts. God help the people of Haiti with these two in charge: a greedy perjuring philandering narcissistic egomaniacal pissed-off emperor-who-would-rule-the-world and his stupid friend. Bill Clinton is already using his appointment to try to schill for his foundation, going onto national TV and telling people that instead of sending money to the well-established and experienced disaster relief and assistance groups of the world (like Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders, and Unicef) they should send money to Bill Clinton. Or send to the Bill Clinton Foundation where he can control it and use it however he wants. Doesn't he have enough money already?
Neo-Liberal Or Neo-Imperialism: Same Difference
I woke up this morning to some high-level racist in our government speaking on NPR and saying that he hopes this earthquake will be a wake-up call to the people of Haiti. After all, he said (ignorantly or deliberately lying) that country has a history of instability and corruption in their government. Pssst! Hey bud! Over here! The U.S. is the one who keeps overthrowing their elected governments, one after the next, and arming gangs of death squads to create instability. And the western nations steal all their resources. Duh-uhh!
Racism: Black People Are Scary
I turned on the national TV this morning. I kept seeing the crawl letters say "Haitian aid workers fear for their lives!" I thought yeah, I'll bet the people inside Haiti fear for their lives because they are being left to die while the aid workers sit on an airport tarmac. Afraid of exactly what? Nobody's been attacked. No evidence of any violence. So what exactly is the basis for the aid workers "fearing for their lives?" I think it's racism. They're afraid to go into the city, because there's so many black people there. Like Detroit, kind of.
I saw a reporter last night telling a scary story. Oooooooo! He said that he heard (urban myth) that some guy loaded bottled water and food into a van and drove into the city, opened the back of his van and handed out the water and food. The men, the stronger people pushed in front and the women and older people were left in the back (like trying to get tickets anywhere in the U.S.). Then when the van was empty, some people got angry!! Ooooooo!
Isn't that a scary story? All these Big Black Men. Angry Black Men. So I waited for the rest of the story. What happened? What's the punchline? Did somebody shoot someone, slap someone, shove them? Steal the van? Knives, guns, bombs, grenades? Nothing. The end of the story was that some of the people who did not get food or water got angry. That's it.
You leave me without food or water for 3 days, I'll show you what angry looks like. The point of the story, as far as I could say, was simple racism: Ooooo, those black men are scary. And this was reported on national TV.
Here's the problem with this story: Anderson Cooper is all over Port au Prince, walking, mingling, broadcasting. How come he can get in there and the entire U.S. government, and all the international relief agencies are too scared to do anything? If it was white people dying of hunger and thirst, I have no doubt nobody would be sitting at the airport. They'd all be in Port au Prince, whether they had to hike in, land in helicopters or otherwise.
The U.S. Has Taken Control Of Haiti. Stop Denying It.
I heard quite a few America representatives saying "we are in charge of everything," followed by somebody else saying "we are not in charge -- the GOVERNMENT OF HAITI is in charge." Except everybody in the Haitian goverment is apparently dead except the U.S.-selected puppet president. And where exactly is he?
I think he's been "detained" at Guantanamo where some Blackwater thugs are breaking his fingers one by one until he signs an agreement turning all the resources of his country over to American corporate interests. I think that behind the scenes, the "representatives" of the U.S. are telling this guy that they will keep all the aid tied up at the airport until he signs. What difference does it make to them if a few million black people die? None at all, from what I've seen.
Phony Rescue Photo-Ops: Here We Go Again
What about the phony U.N. "rescue" we saw yesterday. I think it was like the Jessica Lynch deal, or Pat Tillman story: a photo op staged to make the U.S. look good, despite the fact that we are doing virtually nothing to help the people of Haiti. Here's how it went.
Some rescue group from Virginia (I assume all good guys) went to a U.N. building in Haiti, and the TV cameras showed up just in time for some dude to stand up from inside the building and walk out. Not a scratch on him. Not even any dust, no cuts. His hair wasn't even mussed. But a conveniently-gathered crowd cheered, and he put his hand up into the air in a fist in a sign of triump and walked out looking like he'd just had a good night's sleep, a big breakfast, and a shower and a shave. I have a vague recollection that a tattered American flag was hanging somewhere nearby, prominently featured in the photos. I think the whole thing was staged. And better still: he was white. We saved a white guy. One more for our side!
I've also seen some news about some white girls. The media just loves to see white girls saved.
I've also seen some photos of long lines of Americans at the airport being put on planes and evacuated. I have nothing against rescuing Americas from a disaster zone. But how is it that the U.S. manages to go find them, transport them to the airport, but we can't seem to drop some boxes of antibiotics, bandages, IV solution, to the many hospitals and medical clinics operating around the city?
When Black People Do It, It's Called "Looting."
Everybody's talking about violence, rioting. Have you noticed that when black people scrounge around a disaster area to find food and water for themselves and their community, it's called "Looting."
But when white people scrounge around a disaster area to find food and water for themselves and their white community, it's called "acting heroically." They get onto TV shows at the end of the year: "America's Heroes." "This white person broke into a store and got water and food and saved many lives. We salute him as one of America's Heroes." But the black people, they're looters. Throw their black ass into prison.
Black People Are Violent! [Oh Yeah? How Come It's Always The White Dudes Who Start The Wars?]
All I keep hearing is a fear of violence. Gates said something this morning about hoping to avoid violence. All the media is talking about it. All the U.S. response forces are doing nothing, we are told, because of a fear of violence by the people in Haiti.
But there hasn't been any yet. How can the U.S. justify doing absolutely nothing to help, when there hasn't been any violence? How can they claim a fear of violence? Other than just relying on racism: black people are violent, everybody knows that.
That's the explanation that's being used for the failure to do anything to help these poor people. We are told that all the relief agencies are "afraid." I don't believe it. I think the U.S. won't let them go into the city. I think that the U.S. wants to drag it out until the point that people do start rioting, because then they can land tens of thousands of Marines to occupy the city, drive out the Haitian people into the surrounding countryside, level the city, rebuild the roads and infrastructures, and turn the brand-spanking new clean city over to multinationals under 100-year leases of all the water front. Dubai will own the port. The Hiltons will own all the beachfront and all the hotels. Maybe Trump can build a golf Resort and Trump Tower. I'm sure Clinton and Bush will get their share.
People Of Haiti: Hide! They're Sending Hillary
Hillary Clinton just announced that she is going to Haiti to meet with the U.S. military. What? I think I know what's going on. Everybody from the U.S. is just sitting on the airport tarmac. So Hillary will arrive on a big airplane, wearing a fatigue jacket, and will duck down and run across the tarmac as if the scary black people from Haiti might shoot at her. She can redeem herself about that whole "running across the tarmac under sniper fire" lie that she told so many times in the past. Then she will survey the people sitting on the tarmac, say "carry on," and leave.
If it was up to me, I'd send that John Wayne dude, General Honore, the same guy who made things happen, finally, in New Orleans.
I'm a little tired of sincere pronouncements out of the White House. Let's see some action for a change.
That Bigotted Cracker Pat Robertson Can Kiss My Catholic Ass
Can you believe that Pat Robertson? He said the people in Haiti all made a pact with the devil. They are devil-worshippers. They deserve to be killed in an earthquake. Did you know that the Haitians are 80% Catholic? So, in other words, this ignorant cracker just called my Irish Catholic relatives devil-worshippers. I think the Pope should order a hit on this ignorant white trash. Or better still, somebody could do an extroardinary rendition on the dude and drop him into the middle of Port au Prince. With a big sandwich-board around his neck that says "I hate black people."
The Majority Democrats Have Spit In Our Faces And Deserve To Lose
And as for that Massachusetts senate seat election next week which, if the republicans take it means the healthcare bill dies, that's okay with me because the healthcare bill is nothing more than a corporate give-away. It would be nice to see the Democrats get smacked down for their sell-out of the working people. They've done nothing to help us, they've offered nothing, they should lose.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Haiti: The U.S. Coup And Overthrow Of Jean Bertrand Aristide in 2004 Created the Permanent Disaster In Haiti
Jean Bertrand Aristide was the elected President of Haiti. He was a supporter of a doctrine known as Liberation Theology, which was embraced by some Catholics throughout the world. The Liberation Theology basically was that the Catholic church was called upon to help the citizens of the world gain their basic human rights and dignity, to support policies and programs that would guarantee all people food, shelter, education, medical care, and equal opportunity to earn a living. It was not sufficient for church members to direct the poor to pray. The church was called upon to actively get out in the streets and demand decent opportunity and lives for all people.
Of course the Liberation Theology was opposed by the multinational corporations who own and rule the U.S. and much of the world. They believe in slave labor, in people having no rights whatsoever, and corporations have control of everything.
Jean Bertrand Aristide had been the president of Haiti in the early 1990s, then was overthrown by some gang of thugs. President Bill Clinton (how ironic that he will now be in charge of the "charitable" efforts) told Aristide that the U.S. would put him back into the presidency, but only if Aristide would agree to privatize Haiti's resources. Turn over, sell off to corporations, control of all the state-run utilities, sell off all the assets to multinational corporations. Aristide made a partial agreement, but never carried through with the whole privatization of assets.
Instead, by the time of the Baby-Doc Bush regime, Aristide was promoting the Liberation Theology and advocating for an end to the poverty of his country. Among other things, he was publicly demanding that France pay reparations to Haiti for all the assets that France stole while Haiti was a colony, and thereafter. Finally, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney decided to stage a phony coup in Haiti, overthrow Aristide, and put in a U.S.-supported puppet to take his place.
In 2004, the U.S. Government formed a mercenary squad, trained and armed them, and set about creating chaos throughout Haiti by having these mercenaries roam through poor neighborhoods which supported Aristide, the stronghold of the Aristide-supporting political party named Lavalas, and murdering the Aristide supporters.
Soon Haiti descended into chaos, and the U.S. used that as an opportunity to send in the marines, kidnap Aristide and forcibly remove him from office and from the country. After that, U.N. Security forces remained in control of the country and, among other things, attempted to arrest and/or murdered the major leaders of the Lavalas political party, the supporters of Aristide.
The coup was directed by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. The "new" president was approved by them. The "new" president did not support liberation theology. The Haitian supporters of Aristide have continued to demand that he be allowed to return to his rightful position as president of Haiti. This kidnapping in the night and forcible removal from the country is exactly the same thing that the U.S. recently did to the president of Honduras.
Here are some excerpts from a 2005 article at HaitiAction.net:
"March 8, 2004 - US marines occupy the National Palace after kidnapping the democratically elected President of Haiti — Jean Betrand Aristide — February 29, 2004 from his residence in the middle of the night. The following week the same US Marines provided the example by raiding the peaceful neighborhood of Bel Air in the middle of the night killing unarmed Lavalas supporters in a massacre. This pattern has been followed over the last year by the UN occupation forces and the murderous Coup Government."
by Anthony Fenton
from Left Turn
" Outside of Aristide, who immediately claimed that he was overthrown in a "modern-day" coup d'etat, and lives as the exiled President of Haiti in South Africa, many others oppose the new circumstances. Those who continue to defy the new imperial reality are, not surprisingly, those countries who would have the most at stake were this sort of intervention to become the international norm. 'If they get away with this in Haiti, who's to say that we're not next?' asks the 14-nation Caribbean Community, the 53-member African Union (representing approximately 1 billion people), Cuba, and most vocally perhaps, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez."
"At the recent World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre, [Hugo] Chavez [President of Venezuela] was vocal about his position on Haiti. According to a Workers' World report, he said ...that Jean-Bertrand Aristide is the legitimate president, kidnapped by the U.S. in the same way he was during the April 2002 coup in Venezuela. He mentioned that in the last meeting of the region presidents, he stated that any solution to the crisis in Haiti will have to incorporate Aristide, that the solution could not be in the hands of the United Nations or any group of presidents - who should not interfere in other nations' problems - but in the hands of the Haitian people."
"One of the primary purposes of the initial military occupation was to snuff out as many supporters of the constitution as possible under the guise of bringing "stability" through "disarmament." It only took a month or so to learn about massacres that had been carried out in poor neighborhoods, with many rumors and eyewitness reports implicating foreign soldiers in the targeted killings, creating the very bloodbath that Colin Powell insists that Aristide was avoiding by resigning."
" Only three weeks before Aristide was overthrown (February 7, 2004), over 100,000 Haitians took to the streets and gathered at the National Palace in support of his 5-year constitutional mandate. Here is where the real popular uprising took place. But there weren't any mainstream cameras there to report it, as they were virtually all in Gonaives covering the invasion of U.S. trained paramilitaries who had entered from the Dominican Republic."
"The National Lawyers Guild (NLG, see www.nlg.org) released two reports based on investigations that took place March 29-April 12, 2004. In short, 'the delegation found overwhelming evidence that the victims of the threats and violence have been supporters of the elected government of President Aristide and the Fanmi Lavalas party' and that '[T]he threats have been carried out by former militaries and FRAPH members as well as other supporters of the opposition.'"
"Based on interviews conducted at the state morgue in Port au Prince, NLG states: "[The morgue] Director admitted that 'many' bodies have come into the morgue since March 1, 2004, that are young men with their hands tied behind their backs, plastic bags over their heads, that have been shot." And further, "The Director admitted that 800 bodies were 'dumped and buried' by morgue on Sunday, March 7, 2004, and another 200 bodies dumped on Sunday, March 28, 2004. The 'usual' amount dumped is less than 100 per month." (See Griffin on Democracy Now!, April 12, 2004)"
" In December, Canada, who are overseeing the facilitation of the resulting "Haiti Interim Cooperation Framework," gave the puppet regime $43 million dollars so that they could pay off an existing World Bank debt, in order to incur a new one totaling some $70 million."
"Several governments, including the U.S., Canada, and the EU, deliberately withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in aid from the Haitian government from the late 1990s until February 2004, working instead with favored NGOs."
"Canadian mining company Placer Dome, for example, holds a 25-year concession on the Pueblo Gold Mine Project, "one of the world's largest gold reserves." On the Haitian side, St. Genevieve Resources and KWG Resources have exclusive rights to exploit Haiti's copper and gold reserves, valued at several hundred million dollars. Another of many examples finds t-shirt empire Gildan Activewear overlapping their operations across the Haiti-DR border, with new investments expected to shortly reach $160 million. Gildan's primary subcontractor in Haiti is Andy Apaid, Jr., who not only led the Group of 184 political opposition to Aristide, but is now funding anti-Lavalas gangs in Port au Prince slums. "
Haiti gained its independance from France in 1804. In response, France made a claim against Haiti for the equivalent of billions of dollars on behalf of the Frech citizens who had "lost" their slaves in Haiti because of Haiti's independece, and its people's freedom. Aristide demanded that France pay reparations to Haiti for decades of theft of its resources, and France participated in the efforts to overthrow Aristide.
For more excellent reporting about Aristide, see Jay Atkinson's website http://aristide.org/
Here are excerpts from an article written by Naomi Klein about Aristide after the coup in 2004. Aristide was living in forced exile. He had understood for some time that the multinational corporations wanted to take control of Haiti and privatize its resources, take all the wealth for themselves, and leave the citizens of Haiti in desperate poverty and with no say whatsoever in the running of their own country. Bill Clinton had told Aristide back in the early 1990s that the U.S. and multinational corporations wanted and planned to privatize every resource, every function, every asset in Haiti, and that Aristide needed to go along with the plan if he wanted to keep his position.
Aristide in exile
by Naomi Klein
July 15, 2005
"When United Nations troops kill residents of the Haitian slum Cité Soleil, friends and family often place photographs of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on their bodies. The photographs silently insist that there is a method to the madness raging in Port-au-Prince. Poor Haitians are being slaughtered not for being “violent,’ as we so often hear, but for being militant; for daring to demand the return of their elected president."
"A few weeks ago I visited Aristide in Pretoria, South Africa, where he lives in forced exile. I asked him what was really behind his dramatic falling-out with Washington. He offered an explanation rarely heard in discussions of Haitian politics — actually, he offered three: “privatization, privatization and privatization.’"
"The dispute dates back to a series of meetings in early 1994, a pivotal moment in Haiti's history that Aristide has rarely discussed. Haitians were living under the barbaric rule of Raoul Cédras, who overthrew Aristide in a 1991 U.S.-backed coup. Aristide was in Washington and despite popular calls for his return, there was no way he could face down the junta without military back-up. Increasingly embarrassed by Cédras's abuses, the Clinton Administration offered Aristide a deal: U.S. troops would take him back to Haiti — but only after he agreed to a sweeping economic program with the stated goal to “substantially transform the nature of the Haitian state.’"
"Aristide agreed to pay the debts accumulated under the kleptocratic Duvalier dictatorships, slash the civil service, open up Haiti to “free trade’ and cut import tariffs on rice and corn in half. It was a lousy deal but, Aristide says, he had little choice. “I was out of my country and my country was the poorest in the Western hemisphere, so what kind of power did I have at that time?’"
"But Washington's negotiators made one demand that Aristide could not accept: the immediate sell-off of Haiti's state-owned enterprises, including phones and electricity. Aristide argued that unregulated privatization would transform state monopolies into private oligarchies, increasing the riches of Haiti's elite and stripping the poor of their national wealth. He says the proposal simply didn't add up: “Being honest means saying two plus two equals four. They wanted us to sing two plus two equals five.’"
"Aristide's relationship with Washington has been deteriorating ever since: While more than $500 million in promised loans and aid were cut off, starving his government, USAID poured millions into the coffers of opposition groups, culminating ultimately in the February 2004 armed coup."
Naomi Klein is the author of No Logo and Fences and Windows.
http://www.rabble.ca/columnists_full.shtml?x=40437
Also go to Democracy Now's website for its extensive reporting about Haiti: http://www.democracynow.org/search
Of course the Liberation Theology was opposed by the multinational corporations who own and rule the U.S. and much of the world. They believe in slave labor, in people having no rights whatsoever, and corporations have control of everything.
Jean Bertrand Aristide had been the president of Haiti in the early 1990s, then was overthrown by some gang of thugs. President Bill Clinton (how ironic that he will now be in charge of the "charitable" efforts) told Aristide that the U.S. would put him back into the presidency, but only if Aristide would agree to privatize Haiti's resources. Turn over, sell off to corporations, control of all the state-run utilities, sell off all the assets to multinational corporations. Aristide made a partial agreement, but never carried through with the whole privatization of assets.
Instead, by the time of the Baby-Doc Bush regime, Aristide was promoting the Liberation Theology and advocating for an end to the poverty of his country. Among other things, he was publicly demanding that France pay reparations to Haiti for all the assets that France stole while Haiti was a colony, and thereafter. Finally, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney decided to stage a phony coup in Haiti, overthrow Aristide, and put in a U.S.-supported puppet to take his place.
In 2004, the U.S. Government formed a mercenary squad, trained and armed them, and set about creating chaos throughout Haiti by having these mercenaries roam through poor neighborhoods which supported Aristide, the stronghold of the Aristide-supporting political party named Lavalas, and murdering the Aristide supporters.
Soon Haiti descended into chaos, and the U.S. used that as an opportunity to send in the marines, kidnap Aristide and forcibly remove him from office and from the country. After that, U.N. Security forces remained in control of the country and, among other things, attempted to arrest and/or murdered the major leaders of the Lavalas political party, the supporters of Aristide.
The coup was directed by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. The "new" president was approved by them. The "new" president did not support liberation theology. The Haitian supporters of Aristide have continued to demand that he be allowed to return to his rightful position as president of Haiti. This kidnapping in the night and forcible removal from the country is exactly the same thing that the U.S. recently did to the president of Honduras.
Here are some excerpts from a 2005 article at HaitiAction.net:
"March 8, 2004 - US marines occupy the National Palace after kidnapping the democratically elected President of Haiti — Jean Betrand Aristide — February 29, 2004 from his residence in the middle of the night. The following week the same US Marines provided the example by raiding the peaceful neighborhood of Bel Air in the middle of the night killing unarmed Lavalas supporters in a massacre. This pattern has been followed over the last year by the UN occupation forces and the murderous Coup Government."
by Anthony Fenton
from Left Turn
" Outside of Aristide, who immediately claimed that he was overthrown in a "modern-day" coup d'etat, and lives as the exiled President of Haiti in South Africa, many others oppose the new circumstances. Those who continue to defy the new imperial reality are, not surprisingly, those countries who would have the most at stake were this sort of intervention to become the international norm. 'If they get away with this in Haiti, who's to say that we're not next?' asks the 14-nation Caribbean Community, the 53-member African Union (representing approximately 1 billion people), Cuba, and most vocally perhaps, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez."
"At the recent World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre, [Hugo] Chavez [President of Venezuela] was vocal about his position on Haiti. According to a Workers' World report, he said ...that Jean-Bertrand Aristide is the legitimate president, kidnapped by the U.S. in the same way he was during the April 2002 coup in Venezuela. He mentioned that in the last meeting of the region presidents, he stated that any solution to the crisis in Haiti will have to incorporate Aristide, that the solution could not be in the hands of the United Nations or any group of presidents - who should not interfere in other nations' problems - but in the hands of the Haitian people."
"One of the primary purposes of the initial military occupation was to snuff out as many supporters of the constitution as possible under the guise of bringing "stability" through "disarmament." It only took a month or so to learn about massacres that had been carried out in poor neighborhoods, with many rumors and eyewitness reports implicating foreign soldiers in the targeted killings, creating the very bloodbath that Colin Powell insists that Aristide was avoiding by resigning."
" Only three weeks before Aristide was overthrown (February 7, 2004), over 100,000 Haitians took to the streets and gathered at the National Palace in support of his 5-year constitutional mandate. Here is where the real popular uprising took place. But there weren't any mainstream cameras there to report it, as they were virtually all in Gonaives covering the invasion of U.S. trained paramilitaries who had entered from the Dominican Republic."
"The National Lawyers Guild (NLG, see www.nlg.org) released two reports based on investigations that took place March 29-April 12, 2004. In short, 'the delegation found overwhelming evidence that the victims of the threats and violence have been supporters of the elected government of President Aristide and the Fanmi Lavalas party' and that '[T]he threats have been carried out by former militaries and FRAPH members as well as other supporters of the opposition.'"
"Based on interviews conducted at the state morgue in Port au Prince, NLG states: "[The morgue] Director admitted that 'many' bodies have come into the morgue since March 1, 2004, that are young men with their hands tied behind their backs, plastic bags over their heads, that have been shot." And further, "The Director admitted that 800 bodies were 'dumped and buried' by morgue on Sunday, March 7, 2004, and another 200 bodies dumped on Sunday, March 28, 2004. The 'usual' amount dumped is less than 100 per month." (See Griffin on Democracy Now!, April 12, 2004)"
" In December, Canada, who are overseeing the facilitation of the resulting "Haiti Interim Cooperation Framework," gave the puppet regime $43 million dollars so that they could pay off an existing World Bank debt, in order to incur a new one totaling some $70 million."
"Several governments, including the U.S., Canada, and the EU, deliberately withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in aid from the Haitian government from the late 1990s until February 2004, working instead with favored NGOs."
"Canadian mining company Placer Dome, for example, holds a 25-year concession on the Pueblo Gold Mine Project, "one of the world's largest gold reserves." On the Haitian side, St. Genevieve Resources and KWG Resources have exclusive rights to exploit Haiti's copper and gold reserves, valued at several hundred million dollars. Another of many examples finds t-shirt empire Gildan Activewear overlapping their operations across the Haiti-DR border, with new investments expected to shortly reach $160 million. Gildan's primary subcontractor in Haiti is Andy Apaid, Jr., who not only led the Group of 184 political opposition to Aristide, but is now funding anti-Lavalas gangs in Port au Prince slums. "
Haiti gained its independance from France in 1804. In response, France made a claim against Haiti for the equivalent of billions of dollars on behalf of the Frech citizens who had "lost" their slaves in Haiti because of Haiti's independece, and its people's freedom. Aristide demanded that France pay reparations to Haiti for decades of theft of its resources, and France participated in the efforts to overthrow Aristide.
For more excellent reporting about Aristide, see Jay Atkinson's website http://aristide.org/
Here are excerpts from an article written by Naomi Klein about Aristide after the coup in 2004. Aristide was living in forced exile. He had understood for some time that the multinational corporations wanted to take control of Haiti and privatize its resources, take all the wealth for themselves, and leave the citizens of Haiti in desperate poverty and with no say whatsoever in the running of their own country. Bill Clinton had told Aristide back in the early 1990s that the U.S. and multinational corporations wanted and planned to privatize every resource, every function, every asset in Haiti, and that Aristide needed to go along with the plan if he wanted to keep his position.
Aristide in exile
by Naomi Klein
July 15, 2005
"When United Nations troops kill residents of the Haitian slum Cité Soleil, friends and family often place photographs of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on their bodies. The photographs silently insist that there is a method to the madness raging in Port-au-Prince. Poor Haitians are being slaughtered not for being “violent,’ as we so often hear, but for being militant; for daring to demand the return of their elected president."
"A few weeks ago I visited Aristide in Pretoria, South Africa, where he lives in forced exile. I asked him what was really behind his dramatic falling-out with Washington. He offered an explanation rarely heard in discussions of Haitian politics — actually, he offered three: “privatization, privatization and privatization.’"
"The dispute dates back to a series of meetings in early 1994, a pivotal moment in Haiti's history that Aristide has rarely discussed. Haitians were living under the barbaric rule of Raoul Cédras, who overthrew Aristide in a 1991 U.S.-backed coup. Aristide was in Washington and despite popular calls for his return, there was no way he could face down the junta without military back-up. Increasingly embarrassed by Cédras's abuses, the Clinton Administration offered Aristide a deal: U.S. troops would take him back to Haiti — but only after he agreed to a sweeping economic program with the stated goal to “substantially transform the nature of the Haitian state.’"
"Aristide agreed to pay the debts accumulated under the kleptocratic Duvalier dictatorships, slash the civil service, open up Haiti to “free trade’ and cut import tariffs on rice and corn in half. It was a lousy deal but, Aristide says, he had little choice. “I was out of my country and my country was the poorest in the Western hemisphere, so what kind of power did I have at that time?’"
"But Washington's negotiators made one demand that Aristide could not accept: the immediate sell-off of Haiti's state-owned enterprises, including phones and electricity. Aristide argued that unregulated privatization would transform state monopolies into private oligarchies, increasing the riches of Haiti's elite and stripping the poor of their national wealth. He says the proposal simply didn't add up: “Being honest means saying two plus two equals four. They wanted us to sing two plus two equals five.’"
"Aristide's relationship with Washington has been deteriorating ever since: While more than $500 million in promised loans and aid were cut off, starving his government, USAID poured millions into the coffers of opposition groups, culminating ultimately in the February 2004 armed coup."
Naomi Klein is the author of No Logo and Fences and Windows.
http://www.rabble.ca/columnists_full.shtml?x=40437
Also go to Democracy Now's website for its extensive reporting about Haiti: http://www.democracynow.org/search
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
U.S. - Haiti: History
Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere. But why? It lies off the coast of the U.S. Why doesn't Haiti profit from being near what has historically been such a wealthy nation? Here's a good article that provides an overview.
http://www.zmag.org/blog/view/3710
France claimed to own Haiti as a colony, and took all its resources for years. Even after France was thrown out, other nations continued to invade, attack, stage coups, contribute to instability in that country. The U.S. has invaded and occupied Haiti many times over the years and worked directly or indirectly to overthrow goverments that we did not like.
In the early 1990s, the Haitians elected a man named Aristide who was a progressive. Among other things, he demanded that France pay reparations to Haiti for all the money they had stolen over the years. He was trying to help the people of his country. This type of populist government has never been tolerated by the U.S., which believes that all countries anywhere within its military grasp should obey the U.S., do as told, live under dictatorships when instructed, and remain available as a slave and resource colony for U.S. corporations. So Aristide was overthrown in a coup funded by the U.S., and removed from power.
The U.S. has, among other things, used Haiti as a dumping ground for U.S. subsidized exports to further destabilize their country, and to expand the control of the U.S. Monsanto-controlled agribusiness. For example, the U.S.-AID program began dumping rice into Haiti at prices far below what their own farmers charged. Through this process, the U.S. put most of the rice farmers in Haiti out of business, forced them off of their lands, and drove them to move into the urban areas, live in cardboard shacks, and be available for day labor for U.S. corporate interests.
Once the local rice farmers had been put out of business, the U.S. began raising the price it charged for rice, which led to widespread starvation throughout Haiti in recent years. There were documented reports that the people in Haiti were feeding their children dirt just to fill their stomachs with something. We saw no massive relief effort to help those poor people when they were starving due to U.S. Monsanto Agribusiness trade policies imposed on them against their will.
"Rice was once the country's leading export, until Haiti succumbed to International Monetary Fund pressures and opened its borders to foreign trade -- mostly U.S. -- in the mid-1980s, the heyday of the free-market "neoliberal" economic model, now under attack throughout the developing world."
"With the elimination of trade barriers, the country was flooded with subsidized U.S. rice, which spelled disaster for local producers."
"Domestic and foreign sales of Haitian rice dropped by 50 percent, pushing droves of almost famine-stricken peasants towards the capital's slums. In just over two decades, the population of Port-au-Prince doubled to an estimated four million people today."
"Some trees still grow in the region, and family farming remains a constant, with a small plot planted next to every house along the gravel roads that are rendered impassable by the yearly arrival of heavy rains and flooding. It seems that life in Haiti moves from one extreme to the other, and the only middle ground is the disturbing statistic bearing the number 50."
"Haiti produces only 50 percent of the food consumed there, the average life expectancy is around 50 years, 50 percent of the population is illiterate, and the same proportion is aged 21 or under. Just over 50 percent of Haitians have access to drinking water and sewage services, and roughly the same percentage suffers from malnutrition."
"In this Caribbean island nation, a child dies of hunger every hour, and in the northern regions, where there is little or no agricultural production, the figure rises to 29 deaths a day, out of a total population of slightly over a million."
"Infant mortality as a result of malnutrition and lack of sanitation is 69 per 1000 live births, according to Anne Poulsen, a Danish representative of the World Food Program (WFP) in Haiti."
"These statistics are quite understandable given that three out of every four Haitians depends in one way or another on agriculture, primarily subsistence farming." http://www.monitor.net/monitor/0506a/copyright/haitiriceslums.html
For years Haiti was ruled by a brutal and murderous dictator nicknamed Papa Doc Duvalier. He was succeeded by his son, nicknamed Babydoc Duvalier. Both were murderous tyrants, but since they did not oppose the U.S. policies, the U.S. left them free to murder their own people.
Now Haiti has suffered a terrible disaster, an earthquake officially measuring 7.0 on the richter scale, but which some scientists say was really more like a 9.0, because it was closer to the surface than earthquakes usually are, so the effects were more intense. Much of the infrastructure is gone. Homes, roads, hospitals, schools, government buildings. Estimates of the dead range from the thousands up to half a million. The country is so poor that many charitable organizations maintained permanent missions there, such as the U.N., Doctors Without Borders, and the Salvation Army. Their facilities have been devastated.
Hugo Chavez of Venezuela immediately offered assistance. I love that guy. I assume Cuba has also offered or sent help, because the Heritage Foundation is screaming about both countries, claiming they will just send illegal drugs.
We shall see whether this disaster gives rise to what Naomi Klein, in her book The Shock Doctrine, refers to as disaster capitalism. If it does, that would mean that major U.S. corporate and multinational interests would simply move all the Haitian people off the coast and back inland, take over the coastal properties and "privatize" them by selling a public asset off to private interests, develop them for U.S. tourists, and possibly business interests. We shall see whether the U.S. "assistance" comes with a large price tag to the desperate people of Haiti.
Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine (which Rachel Maddow calls the one book that every single person should read, no exceptions) describes how the corporate multinational elite have crafted a response to disasters which allows them to take complete control of a country when it is temporarily off-balance because of things like a coup or a natural disaster. Will Haiti be the next country to be taken over for multinational corporate benefits.
Here's a link to Naomi Klein's website and her brief comment on the situation: http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2010/01/haiti-disaster-capitalism-alert-stop-them-they-shock-again
She calls it disaster capitalism. Multinational corporate groups move into a country during a period of instability, take it over, and re-shape it for their own profit. For example, right after the tsunamis, the former Presidents Daddy [Papa Doc] Bush and Bill Clinton were put in charge of "coordinating" the international relief effort. The result is that the nations hardest hit by the tsunamis saw their entire coastal areas given over to multinational hotel and resort corporate interests, and the people of those nations were pushed inland and given essentially no relief at all. They lost their homes, their land, and the means by which they and their ancestors had earned a living by fishing off the coast. The coastal property was privatized and set aside only for the use and benefit of rich tourists who would come to stay in the lavish hotel resorts built after the tsunami.
The Heritage Foundation is an extreme right-wing group that promotes just this type of multinational corporate control of every country. Which, by the way, means that people and their elected governments have no say in the management of their own countries and lives because everyone everywhere is ruled by faceless nameless multinational corporations.
Guess what the Heritage Foundation came out and said yesterday? Essentially, that multinational corporations should take over Haiti and use it for their own benefit. And that the former President [PapaDoc or BabyDoc?] Bush and Bill Clinton should be put in charge of the effort. Unfortunately, President Obama, despite his sincere statements of concern for the people of Haiti, did exactly what the Heritage foundation wanted: he put BabyDoc Bush ("W") and Bill Clinton in charge.
Just watch. The people of Haiti will get nothing. The hundreds of millions of dollars pouring in for relief and assistance will be used to clear the entire city of Port au Prince, build a new airport, roads, fancy hotels, maybe some high-rise buildings and codos for the corporate interests who will move in and take control of the country. But the people of Haiti will get nothing. Well, maybe a bottle of water and a tent.
As I noted before, do not give money to the American Red Cross. The Heritage Foundation is encouraging people to give money to that group. I have a list of better organizations in a post yesterday.
Anyway, there is a history that is important. If Haiti wasn't so poor, if they had properly constructed infrastructure, if they had their own government instead of just a series of men who serve at the will of the U.S. government, if they had a real infrastructure they could maintain order and control of their own country.
What happens when a country is broke, and cannot maintain its own infrastructure? It is left entirely vulnerable to be taken over by others. Then the people of Haiti will have no benefit from their own country, and no say in how it is run. We shall see.
This is actually what the same groups are pushing for in the U.S.: bankrupt the people and the states so the multinational corporations take over everything. The end of democracy.
http://www.zmag.org/blog/view/3710
France claimed to own Haiti as a colony, and took all its resources for years. Even after France was thrown out, other nations continued to invade, attack, stage coups, contribute to instability in that country. The U.S. has invaded and occupied Haiti many times over the years and worked directly or indirectly to overthrow goverments that we did not like.
In the early 1990s, the Haitians elected a man named Aristide who was a progressive. Among other things, he demanded that France pay reparations to Haiti for all the money they had stolen over the years. He was trying to help the people of his country. This type of populist government has never been tolerated by the U.S., which believes that all countries anywhere within its military grasp should obey the U.S., do as told, live under dictatorships when instructed, and remain available as a slave and resource colony for U.S. corporations. So Aristide was overthrown in a coup funded by the U.S., and removed from power.
The U.S. has, among other things, used Haiti as a dumping ground for U.S. subsidized exports to further destabilize their country, and to expand the control of the U.S. Monsanto-controlled agribusiness. For example, the U.S.-AID program began dumping rice into Haiti at prices far below what their own farmers charged. Through this process, the U.S. put most of the rice farmers in Haiti out of business, forced them off of their lands, and drove them to move into the urban areas, live in cardboard shacks, and be available for day labor for U.S. corporate interests.
Once the local rice farmers had been put out of business, the U.S. began raising the price it charged for rice, which led to widespread starvation throughout Haiti in recent years. There were documented reports that the people in Haiti were feeding their children dirt just to fill their stomachs with something. We saw no massive relief effort to help those poor people when they were starving due to U.S. Monsanto Agribusiness trade policies imposed on them against their will.
"Rice was once the country's leading export, until Haiti succumbed to International Monetary Fund pressures and opened its borders to foreign trade -- mostly U.S. -- in the mid-1980s, the heyday of the free-market "neoliberal" economic model, now under attack throughout the developing world."
"With the elimination of trade barriers, the country was flooded with subsidized U.S. rice, which spelled disaster for local producers."
"Domestic and foreign sales of Haitian rice dropped by 50 percent, pushing droves of almost famine-stricken peasants towards the capital's slums. In just over two decades, the population of Port-au-Prince doubled to an estimated four million people today."
"Some trees still grow in the region, and family farming remains a constant, with a small plot planted next to every house along the gravel roads that are rendered impassable by the yearly arrival of heavy rains and flooding. It seems that life in Haiti moves from one extreme to the other, and the only middle ground is the disturbing statistic bearing the number 50."
"Haiti produces only 50 percent of the food consumed there, the average life expectancy is around 50 years, 50 percent of the population is illiterate, and the same proportion is aged 21 or under. Just over 50 percent of Haitians have access to drinking water and sewage services, and roughly the same percentage suffers from malnutrition."
"In this Caribbean island nation, a child dies of hunger every hour, and in the northern regions, where there is little or no agricultural production, the figure rises to 29 deaths a day, out of a total population of slightly over a million."
"Infant mortality as a result of malnutrition and lack of sanitation is 69 per 1000 live births, according to Anne Poulsen, a Danish representative of the World Food Program (WFP) in Haiti."
"These statistics are quite understandable given that three out of every four Haitians depends in one way or another on agriculture, primarily subsistence farming." http://www.monitor.net/monitor/0506a/copyright/haitiriceslums.html
For years Haiti was ruled by a brutal and murderous dictator nicknamed Papa Doc Duvalier. He was succeeded by his son, nicknamed Babydoc Duvalier. Both were murderous tyrants, but since they did not oppose the U.S. policies, the U.S. left them free to murder their own people.
Now Haiti has suffered a terrible disaster, an earthquake officially measuring 7.0 on the richter scale, but which some scientists say was really more like a 9.0, because it was closer to the surface than earthquakes usually are, so the effects were more intense. Much of the infrastructure is gone. Homes, roads, hospitals, schools, government buildings. Estimates of the dead range from the thousands up to half a million. The country is so poor that many charitable organizations maintained permanent missions there, such as the U.N., Doctors Without Borders, and the Salvation Army. Their facilities have been devastated.
Hugo Chavez of Venezuela immediately offered assistance. I love that guy. I assume Cuba has also offered or sent help, because the Heritage Foundation is screaming about both countries, claiming they will just send illegal drugs.
We shall see whether this disaster gives rise to what Naomi Klein, in her book The Shock Doctrine, refers to as disaster capitalism. If it does, that would mean that major U.S. corporate and multinational interests would simply move all the Haitian people off the coast and back inland, take over the coastal properties and "privatize" them by selling a public asset off to private interests, develop them for U.S. tourists, and possibly business interests. We shall see whether the U.S. "assistance" comes with a large price tag to the desperate people of Haiti.
Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine (which Rachel Maddow calls the one book that every single person should read, no exceptions) describes how the corporate multinational elite have crafted a response to disasters which allows them to take complete control of a country when it is temporarily off-balance because of things like a coup or a natural disaster. Will Haiti be the next country to be taken over for multinational corporate benefits.
Here's a link to Naomi Klein's website and her brief comment on the situation: http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2010/01/haiti-disaster-capitalism-alert-stop-them-they-shock-again
She calls it disaster capitalism. Multinational corporate groups move into a country during a period of instability, take it over, and re-shape it for their own profit. For example, right after the tsunamis, the former Presidents Daddy [Papa Doc] Bush and Bill Clinton were put in charge of "coordinating" the international relief effort. The result is that the nations hardest hit by the tsunamis saw their entire coastal areas given over to multinational hotel and resort corporate interests, and the people of those nations were pushed inland and given essentially no relief at all. They lost their homes, their land, and the means by which they and their ancestors had earned a living by fishing off the coast. The coastal property was privatized and set aside only for the use and benefit of rich tourists who would come to stay in the lavish hotel resorts built after the tsunami.
The Heritage Foundation is an extreme right-wing group that promotes just this type of multinational corporate control of every country. Which, by the way, means that people and their elected governments have no say in the management of their own countries and lives because everyone everywhere is ruled by faceless nameless multinational corporations.
Guess what the Heritage Foundation came out and said yesterday? Essentially, that multinational corporations should take over Haiti and use it for their own benefit. And that the former President [PapaDoc or BabyDoc?] Bush and Bill Clinton should be put in charge of the effort. Unfortunately, President Obama, despite his sincere statements of concern for the people of Haiti, did exactly what the Heritage foundation wanted: he put BabyDoc Bush ("W") and Bill Clinton in charge.
Just watch. The people of Haiti will get nothing. The hundreds of millions of dollars pouring in for relief and assistance will be used to clear the entire city of Port au Prince, build a new airport, roads, fancy hotels, maybe some high-rise buildings and codos for the corporate interests who will move in and take control of the country. But the people of Haiti will get nothing. Well, maybe a bottle of water and a tent.
As I noted before, do not give money to the American Red Cross. The Heritage Foundation is encouraging people to give money to that group. I have a list of better organizations in a post yesterday.
Anyway, there is a history that is important. If Haiti wasn't so poor, if they had properly constructed infrastructure, if they had their own government instead of just a series of men who serve at the will of the U.S. government, if they had a real infrastructure they could maintain order and control of their own country.
What happens when a country is broke, and cannot maintain its own infrastructure? It is left entirely vulnerable to be taken over by others. Then the people of Haiti will have no benefit from their own country, and no say in how it is run. We shall see.
This is actually what the same groups are pushing for in the U.S.: bankrupt the people and the states so the multinational corporations take over everything. The end of democracy.
Haiti
Don't send money to the Red Cross. They hire Republicans to run the local chapters and pay them outrageous salaries to go to banquets and act like they care.
Here's a link to the American Red Cross tax return for 2005: http://www.redcross.org/www-files/Documents/pdf/corppubs/990fy2005.pdf
I'm sure other tax returns, both national and local, are also online, but this is the first one I found, and it will do as well as any other.
The Red Cross is what we think of as a charitable organization although the fact is that they make lots of money selling blood. But they also gets lots of money donated from good-hearted Americans, school-children saving their pennies. How does the American Red Cross treat these donations? The insiders pay themselves obscene salaries and benefits, and get rich. Their public "charitable" work pales in comparison with the donations to themselves of the money entrusted to them by the public.
Go to the link to the tax return, then scroll down to page 36. It shows that they paid their President $493,616 in salary for the year plus an additional $28,000 in other employee benefits, plus an additional $12,000 as an expense report. Well over half a million dollars paid to the President for that one year alone. And you probably thought people who work at charities are low-paid. Not at the American Red Cross. The person described as General Counsel and corporate secretary was paid $296,228 in salary, "$15,600 in additional employee benefits, and $2,400 as a expense account, or well over $300,000. Somebody who has the title of Executive VP and CEO of the biomedical Services branch of the Red Cross (blood sales) was paid a base salary of $400,000, an additional $19,000 for other employee benefits, and $3,000 for his expense account. Someone else, executive VP of disaster services was paid about $250,000 for salary and benefits, plus an additional $51,600 in severance. So apparently they did a crappy job and got fired, but were paid $300,000 for the year.
These salaries are grossly in excess of what could be found in most private industry, and are certainly not consistent with an organization that claims to be "charitable." Unless, I guess, they believe charity begins at home, so they are mostly exceedingly generous with themselves. This level of self-dealing makes me sick when I think of the millions of Americans who donate their time to help raise money for this organization, or to help others in need. But there's more. their CEO was paid $210,000 for the year, and their CFO was paid almost $350,000. All you CPAs out there who are looking for a job, be sure to check out the Red Cross because they pay big bucks to the insiders.
Then go look at the same link, same tax return, page 48, where they list big bucks paid to the five highest paid employees other than officers, directors, trustees. We begin with the VP and COO of Plasma Services (more sale of blood) who was paid over $320,000 for the one year in basic salary and benefits PLUS an additional $132,600 for Program termination retention payment whatever that is, plus severance of $30,600, plus an additional 107,000 in other employee benefits or deferred compensation, for a whopping total of almost $590,000 for the one year period, for an employee who apparently did a crappy job and got fired.
Next we have a lucky lady who was COO of the American Red Cross in the Greater New York area who was paid $315,600 for her basic salary plus $21,000 in employee benefits, about $3,000 for an expense report, plus a "performance bonus" of $60,000, for a total of almost $380,000 for the year. Another lucky guy, VP of Sales for Plasma Services (blood sale) was paid $235,000 for base salary, benefits and expense report, plus something called a Program termination retention payment of $105,200, for a total salary for that one year of $340,000. Then on the bottom of page 48, we have a Chief Technical Officer, Plasma Services (blood sales) who was paid $230,000 in salary, benefits and expenses, plus an additional $104,000 for that mysterious Program termination retention payment, for a total salary of $335,000.
GIVE ME AN F-ING BREAK. This isn't a charity. It's a boondoggle for some rich, connected insiders who loot the place, take money from schoolchildren, and makes themselves rich while going out in public and "appealing" for donations from the public. I wouldn't give them a penny.
If you want to help, send money to the group Doctors Without Borders (Medicins sans frontieres). Here's their link and a description of their emergency work in Haiti, plus a place to donate: http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/
Here's a link to the 2008 tax returns for Doctors Without Borders. Their very top top employees were paid around $100,000. A big difference from the big spenders over at the Red Cross. http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/donate/form990/form990_2008.pdf
Or, send money to Oxfam. Here's a link to their website, which includes a short video appealing for assistance and explaining how they are trying to help in Haiti: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/oxfam_in_action/emergencies/haiti-earthquake.html?ito=3489&itc=0
Here is Wyclef Jean's organization, set up to assist the people in Haiti: http://www.yele.org/
Here's another good Haiti-support organization called Artists for Peace and Justice:
http://artistsforpeaceandjustice.com/
Here's a link to the American Red Cross tax return for 2005: http://www.redcross.org/www-files/Documents/pdf/corppubs/990fy2005.pdf
I'm sure other tax returns, both national and local, are also online, but this is the first one I found, and it will do as well as any other.
The Red Cross is what we think of as a charitable organization although the fact is that they make lots of money selling blood. But they also gets lots of money donated from good-hearted Americans, school-children saving their pennies. How does the American Red Cross treat these donations? The insiders pay themselves obscene salaries and benefits, and get rich. Their public "charitable" work pales in comparison with the donations to themselves of the money entrusted to them by the public.
Go to the link to the tax return, then scroll down to page 36. It shows that they paid their President $493,616 in salary for the year plus an additional $28,000 in other employee benefits, plus an additional $12,000 as an expense report. Well over half a million dollars paid to the President for that one year alone. And you probably thought people who work at charities are low-paid. Not at the American Red Cross. The person described as General Counsel and corporate secretary was paid $296,228 in salary, "$15,600 in additional employee benefits, and $2,400 as a expense account, or well over $300,000. Somebody who has the title of Executive VP and CEO of the biomedical Services branch of the Red Cross (blood sales) was paid a base salary of $400,000, an additional $19,000 for other employee benefits, and $3,000 for his expense account. Someone else, executive VP of disaster services was paid about $250,000 for salary and benefits, plus an additional $51,600 in severance. So apparently they did a crappy job and got fired, but were paid $300,000 for the year.
These salaries are grossly in excess of what could be found in most private industry, and are certainly not consistent with an organization that claims to be "charitable." Unless, I guess, they believe charity begins at home, so they are mostly exceedingly generous with themselves. This level of self-dealing makes me sick when I think of the millions of Americans who donate their time to help raise money for this organization, or to help others in need. But there's more. their CEO was paid $210,000 for the year, and their CFO was paid almost $350,000. All you CPAs out there who are looking for a job, be sure to check out the Red Cross because they pay big bucks to the insiders.
Then go look at the same link, same tax return, page 48, where they list big bucks paid to the five highest paid employees other than officers, directors, trustees. We begin with the VP and COO of Plasma Services (more sale of blood) who was paid over $320,000 for the one year in basic salary and benefits PLUS an additional $132,600 for Program termination retention payment whatever that is, plus severance of $30,600, plus an additional 107,000 in other employee benefits or deferred compensation, for a whopping total of almost $590,000 for the one year period, for an employee who apparently did a crappy job and got fired.
Next we have a lucky lady who was COO of the American Red Cross in the Greater New York area who was paid $315,600 for her basic salary plus $21,000 in employee benefits, about $3,000 for an expense report, plus a "performance bonus" of $60,000, for a total of almost $380,000 for the year. Another lucky guy, VP of Sales for Plasma Services (blood sale) was paid $235,000 for base salary, benefits and expense report, plus something called a Program termination retention payment of $105,200, for a total salary for that one year of $340,000. Then on the bottom of page 48, we have a Chief Technical Officer, Plasma Services (blood sales) who was paid $230,000 in salary, benefits and expenses, plus an additional $104,000 for that mysterious Program termination retention payment, for a total salary of $335,000.
GIVE ME AN F-ING BREAK. This isn't a charity. It's a boondoggle for some rich, connected insiders who loot the place, take money from schoolchildren, and makes themselves rich while going out in public and "appealing" for donations from the public. I wouldn't give them a penny.
If you want to help, send money to the group Doctors Without Borders (Medicins sans frontieres). Here's their link and a description of their emergency work in Haiti, plus a place to donate: http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/
Here's a link to the 2008 tax returns for Doctors Without Borders. Their very top top employees were paid around $100,000. A big difference from the big spenders over at the Red Cross. http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/donate/form990/form990_2008.pdf
Or, send money to Oxfam. Here's a link to their website, which includes a short video appealing for assistance and explaining how they are trying to help in Haiti: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/oxfam_in_action/emergencies/haiti-earthquake.html?ito=3489&itc=0
Here is Wyclef Jean's organization, set up to assist the people in Haiti: http://www.yele.org/
Here's another good Haiti-support organization called Artists for Peace and Justice:
http://artistsforpeaceandjustice.com/
Monday, January 11, 2010
"Liz"? Or "Dick-In-A-Wig"? You Decide.
There's this obnoxious foul-mouthed right-winger who keeps popping up on TV news shows bashing everything that is good and supporting everything that is evil. She claims that her name is "Liz" Cheney. And that she is one of the daughters of "Dick" Cheney. But if you notice, you never see the two of them together.
I'm beginning to think that this so-called "Liz" person may just be ""Dick-In-A-Wig."
You decide:
First, "Liz" (with friend):
And here's "Dick":
You decide. Is this so-called "Liz" person really just "Dick-In-A-Wig"? Is Dick Cheney a transvestite? I'm not saying he is. Just reporting the facts as I see them.
I'm beginning to think that this so-called "Liz" person may just be ""Dick-In-A-Wig."
You decide:
First, "Liz" (with friend):
And here's "Dick":
You decide. Is this so-called "Liz" person really just "Dick-In-A-Wig"? Is Dick Cheney a transvestite? I'm not saying he is. Just reporting the facts as I see them.
Ben Cohen's Oreos.
You've probably heard of Ben Cohen. No? New York Super Fudge Chunk? Chunky Monkey? Cherry Garcia. Karamel Sutra. Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. Ben & Jerrys, that amazing ice cream that none of us eat anymore because of cholesterol (but keep a pint on hand for emergencies).
Ben Cohen is a progressive business person. He made this video along with a group named True Majority. Here's their link: http://www.truemajority.org/ The video was made a few years ago, but the basic information remains true. Actually, it's much worse today. We spend an obscene amount of money on wars. The country is broke, but the war spending continues, the war profiteering keeps making corporations and politicians rich.
The people who profit from wars are the defense industry, paid mercenaries and assassins like Blackwater, "support" corporations like Halliburton, and every single politician in the national government who receives enormous bribes and kick-backs from the "military-industrial complex."
When Dwight Eisenhower was in the military he was in charge of D-Day, a General, a courageous man greatly admired throughout the world. Then he became President of the U.S. And when he was about to step down, he gave a speech to the nation warning about a "military-industrial complex" that was trying to take over the government. Well, they've succeeded, and unfortunately we have few politicians in federal government willing to speak out against them.
This whole war stuff is just bullshit. We have no jobs. We have people being thrown out of their homes. Our schools are deteriorating, our states re bankrupt and are auctioning off the assets of the states, and they tell us that we cannot afford healthcare for our own people. Can't even afford to provide healthcare for our nation's children.
These war profiteers make blood money off of the deaths of our young people, generation after generation being sent to die on foreign soil for no good reason at all. The war profiteers steal most of the money from this country and use it to make toys. Death toys. Toys that kill. Like the predator drones we keep hearing about. Some techie sitting in a room "thinks" he sees "dangerous" people somewhere so sends out an enormous bomb to kill them all. Often the bombs are being dropped on villages, blowing up normal people. Innocent people. Techies Kill. The Serial-Killing Geek Squad. Billion-dollar toys of no use to anyone except the people who get the contracts to make them at enormous profit.
We need to beat our swords into plowshares. The Democrats are just as hawkish as the Republicans are, and they take just as much money in kick-backs and bribes. We, the people, need to demand that our politicians shut down the hundreds of military bases we have around the world, end these wars for oil, bring the troops home, and use our money inside our country to help our own people instead of killing others.
Here's Eisenhower's farewell speech to the nation in which he warns the citizens that they must not let the military industrial complex take control of the government. He was a Republican and a General, but he had no time for the war-profiteers in the U.S. industries. Now he's dead, and the war-profiteers run everything.
Ben Cohen is a progressive business person. He made this video along with a group named True Majority. Here's their link: http://www.truemajority.org/ The video was made a few years ago, but the basic information remains true. Actually, it's much worse today. We spend an obscene amount of money on wars. The country is broke, but the war spending continues, the war profiteering keeps making corporations and politicians rich.
The people who profit from wars are the defense industry, paid mercenaries and assassins like Blackwater, "support" corporations like Halliburton, and every single politician in the national government who receives enormous bribes and kick-backs from the "military-industrial complex."
When Dwight Eisenhower was in the military he was in charge of D-Day, a General, a courageous man greatly admired throughout the world. Then he became President of the U.S. And when he was about to step down, he gave a speech to the nation warning about a "military-industrial complex" that was trying to take over the government. Well, they've succeeded, and unfortunately we have few politicians in federal government willing to speak out against them.
This whole war stuff is just bullshit. We have no jobs. We have people being thrown out of their homes. Our schools are deteriorating, our states re bankrupt and are auctioning off the assets of the states, and they tell us that we cannot afford healthcare for our own people. Can't even afford to provide healthcare for our nation's children.
These war profiteers make blood money off of the deaths of our young people, generation after generation being sent to die on foreign soil for no good reason at all. The war profiteers steal most of the money from this country and use it to make toys. Death toys. Toys that kill. Like the predator drones we keep hearing about. Some techie sitting in a room "thinks" he sees "dangerous" people somewhere so sends out an enormous bomb to kill them all. Often the bombs are being dropped on villages, blowing up normal people. Innocent people. Techies Kill. The Serial-Killing Geek Squad. Billion-dollar toys of no use to anyone except the people who get the contracts to make them at enormous profit.
We need to beat our swords into plowshares. The Democrats are just as hawkish as the Republicans are, and they take just as much money in kick-backs and bribes. We, the people, need to demand that our politicians shut down the hundreds of military bases we have around the world, end these wars for oil, bring the troops home, and use our money inside our country to help our own people instead of killing others.
Here's Eisenhower's farewell speech to the nation in which he warns the citizens that they must not let the military industrial complex take control of the government. He was a Republican and a General, but he had no time for the war-profiteers in the U.S. industries. Now he's dead, and the war-profiteers run everything.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)