[Radix] The Right Testicle of Hell: History of a Haitian Holocaust

[Marla Petal]

> The Right Testicle of Hell:
> History of a Haitian Holocaust
>
> Blackwater before drinking water
>
> by Greg Palast for The Huffington Post
> Sunday 17 January 2010
>
> 1. Bless the President for having rescue teams in the air almost  
> immediately. That was President Olafur Grimsson of Iceland. On  
> Wednesday, the AP reported that the President of the United States  
> promised, "The initial contingent of 2,000 Marines could be deployed  
> to the quake-ravaged country within the next few days." "In a few  
> days," Mr. Obama?
>
> 2. There's no such thing as a 'natural' disaster. 200,000 Haitians  
> have been slaughtered by slum housing and IMF "austerity" plans.
>
> 3. A friend of mine called. Do I know a journalist who could get  
> medicine to her father? And she added, trying to hold her voice  
> together, "My sister, she's under the rubble. Is anyone going who  
> can help, anyone?" Should I tell her, "Obama will have Marines there  
> in 'a few days'"?
>
> 4. China deployed rescuers with sniffer dogs within 48 hours. China,  
> Mr. President. China: 8,000 miles distant. Miami: 700 miles close.  
> US bases in Puerto Rico: right there.
>
> 5. Obama's Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, "I don't know how  
> this government could have responded faster or more comprehensively  
> than it has." We know Gates doesn't know.
>
> 6. From my own work in the field, I know that FEMA has access to  
> ready-to-go potable water, generators, mobile medical equipment and  
> more for hurricane relief on the Gulf Coast. It's all still there.  
> Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who served as the task force commander  
> for emergency response after Hurricane Katrina, told the Christian  
> Science Monitor, "I thought we had learned that from Katrina, take  
> food and water and start evacuating people." Maybe we learned but,  
> apparently, Gates and the Defense Department missed school that day.
>
> 7. Send in the Marines. That's America's response. That's what we're  
> good at. The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson finally showed up  
> after three days. With what? It was dramatically deployed — without  
> any emergency relief supplies. It has sidewinder missiles and 19  
> helicopters.
>
> 8. But don't worry, the International Search and Rescue Team, fully  
> equipped and self-sufficient for up to seven days in the field,  
> deployed immediately with ten metric tons of tools and equipment,  
> three tons of water, tents, advanced communication equipment and  
> water purifying capability. They're from Iceland.
>
> 9. Gates wouldn't send in food and water because, he said, there was  
> no "structure ... to provide security." For Gates, appointed by Bush  
> and allowed to hang around by Obama, it's security first. That was  
> his lesson from Hurricane Katrina. Blackwater before drinking water.
>
> 10. Previous US presidents have acted far more swiftly in getting  
> troops on the ground on that island. Haiti is the right half of the  
> island of Hispaniola. It's treated like the right testicle of Hell.  
> The Dominican Republic the left. In 1965, when Dominicans demanded  
> the return of Juan Bosch, their elected President, deposed by a  
> junta, Lyndon Johnson reacted to this crisis rapidly, landing 45,000  
> US Marines on the beaches to prevent the return of the elected  
> president.
>
> 11. How did Haiti end up so economically weakened, with  
> infrastructure, from hospitals to water systems, busted or non- 
> existent - there are two fire stations in the entire nation - and  
> infrastructure so frail that the nation was simply waiting for  
> "nature" to finish it off?
>
>
> Don't blame Mother Nature for all this death and destruction. That  
> dishonor goes to Papa Doc and Baby Doc, the Duvalier dictatorship,  
> which looted the nation for 28 years. Papa and his Baby put an  
> estimated 80% of world aid into their own pockets - with the  
> complicity of the US government happy to have the Duvaliers and  
> their voodoo militia, Tonton Macoutes, as allies in the Cold War.  
> (The war was easily won: the Duvaliers' death squads murdered as  
> many as 60,000 opponents of the regime.)
>
> 12. What Papa and Baby didn't run off with, the IMF finished off  
> through its "austerity" plans. An austerity plan is a form of voodoo  
> orchestrated by economists zomby-fied by an irrational belief that  
> cutting government services will somehow help a nation prosper.
>
> 13. In 1991, five years after the murderous Baby fled, Haitians  
> elected a priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who resisted the IMF's  
> austerity diktats. Within months, the military, to the applause of  
> Papa George HW Bush, deposed him. History repeats itself, first as  
> tragedy, then as farce. The farce was George W. Bush. In 2004, after  
> the priest Aristide was re-elected President, he was kidnapped and  
> removed again, to the applause of Baby Bush.
>
> 14. Haiti was once a wealthy nation, the wealthiest in the  
> hemisphere, worth more, wrote Voltaire in the 18th century, than  
> that rocky, cold colony known as New England. Haiti's wealth was in  
> black gold: slaves. But then the slaves rebelled - and have been  
> paying for it ever since.
>
>
> From 1825 to 1947, France forced Haiti to pay an annual fee to  
> reimburse the profits lost by French slaveholders caused by their  
> slaves' successful uprising. Rather than enslave individual  
> Haitians, France thought it more efficient to simply enslave the  
> entire nation.
>
> 15. Secretary Gates tells us, "There are just some certain facts of  
> life that affect how quickly you can do some of these things." The  
> Navy's hospital boat will be there in, oh, a week or so. Heckuva  
> job, Brownie!
>
> 16. Note just received from my friend. Her sister was found, dead;  
> and her other sister had to bury her. Her father needs his anti- 
> seizure medicines. That's a fact of life too, Mr. President.
>
> ***
> Through our journalism network, we are trying to get my friend's  
> medicines to her father. If any reader does have someone getting  
> into or near Port-au-Prince, please contact Haiti at GregPalast.com  
> immediately.
> Urgently recommended reading - The Black Jacobins: Toussaint  
> L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, the history of the  
> successful slave uprising in Hispaniola by the brilliant CLR James.
>
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Marla Petal
Email: mpetal at imagins.com

Turkey +90 539 747 7944     Switzerland +41 76 240 8474
USA +1 (408) 806 7888         Efax. +1 (408) 516-5841
Skype: shmarla

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