January 2010

The kidnapping of Haiti
Posted: Thursday, January 28, 2010

¤ Howard Zinn, Historian who Challenged Status Quo, Dies at 87

¤ The kidnapping of Haiti
The theft of Haiti has been swift and crude. On 22 January, the United States secured "formal approval" from the United Nations to take over all air and sea ports in Haiti, and to "secure" roads. No Haitian signed the agreement, which has no basis in law. Power rules in a US naval blockade and the arrival of 13,000 marines, special forces, spooks and mercenaries, none with humanitarian relief training.
The airport in the capital, Port-au-Prince, is now a US military base and relief flights have been rerouted to the Dominican Republic.

¤ Indefinite Detention "Defies Common Sense"

¤ North Korea fires more artillery toward sea border

¤ Hope for Haiti when?
But a question bears asking: How much of this large sum will actually make it to the people of Haiti? As the death toll from the earthquake seems to climb ever higher, it's apparent that real aid is undeniably needed. News from the country itself, however, reveals that what has been coming in looks more like a military occupation than anything resembling help. The presence of the U.S. "stabilization force" has actually meant that barely a fraction of the aid headed to Haiti has gotten into people's hands.

¤ The Fourth Invasion
Nine days after the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12, 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.

¤ Haitians are Helping Haitians

¤ Roots of Liberty, Roots of Disaster
The leader of Haiti's historic slave rebellion probably had a good idea of just how vicious the colonial powers could be. He knew they would use all of their political and military muscle to kill the roots of the modern world's first black republic. But L'Ouverture could never have imagined the chain of human tragedies that would follow these vengeful acts of political and economic terrorism. He would never have imagined the national disaster following last week's devastating earthquake

¤ Haiti puts brakes on orphan flights
¤ No Vacancies! Miami Hospitals Stop Taking Earthquake Victims

¤ Chavez Writes Off Haiti’s Oil Debt to Venezuela
President Hugo Chavez announced Monday that he would write off the undisclosed sum Haiti owes Venezuela for oil as part of the ALBA bloc’s plans to help the impoverished Caribbean nation after the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake. “Haiti has no debt with Venezuela, just the opposite: Venezuela has a historical debt with that nation, with that people for whom we feel not pity but rather admiration, and we share their faith, their hope,” Chavez said after the extraordinary meeting of foreign ministers of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, or ALBA.

¤ ALBA countries allocate $120 million in aid to Haiti
he Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) politico-economic bloc, at a special meeting in the Venezuelan capital on Monday, adopted a plan aimed at giving aid to Haiti in the elimination of the aftermath of the devastating earthquake and in the restoration of that Caribbean country. In urgent aid to the medical sector, the ALBA member-countries -- Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and the Caribbean island countries of Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, the Commonwealth of Dominica -- assigned $20 million.

¤ Security Kills
Six days after the earthquake in Haiti, the U.S. Southern Command finally began to drop bottled water and food (MREs) from an Air Force C-17. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates had previously rejected such a method because of “security concerns.” The Guardian reports that people are dying of thirst. And if they do not get clean water, there can be epidemics of water-borne diseases that could greatly increase the death toll.

¤ West Urged to Write Off Haiti's $1bn Debt

¤ Media Failures on Haiti: Great Television, Bad Journalism
CNN’s star anchor Anderson Cooper narrates a chaotic street scene in Port-au-Prince. A boy is struck in the head by a rock thrown by a looter from a roof. Cooper helps him to the side of the road, and then realizes the boy is disoriented and unable to get away. Laying down his digital camera (but still being filmed by another CNN camera), Cooper picks up the boy and lifts him over a barricade to safety, we hope.

¤ Democracy in America Is a Useful Fiction

¤ Obama's War for Oil in Colombia

¤ 40 days that made illegal attack into legal war on Iraq

¤ Chinese legal experts call for ban on eating cats and dogs

¤ British invasion of Iraq was illegal: ex-govt lawyer

¤ Ecuador’s Correa condemns right-wing coup plot

¤ Cornell West Asks Obama: How Deep is Your Love for Poor and Working People?

¤ Wanted: Tony Blair for war crimes. Arrest him and claim your reward

Haiti: the real looters are sitting in Washington
Posted: Sunday, January 24, 2010

¤ Haiti: the real looters are sitting in Washington by Viv Smith
FOUR DAYS AFTER the disaster in Haiti, the media shifted its attention from images of suffering to those of looting. Talk has turned to keeping "law and order". Haitians are increasingly depicted as savages. But the real savages and looters are the US ruling class. Instead of helping to rebuild Haiti's infrastructure to meet people's needs, the US is ensuring that the rich who have plundered Haiti for 200 years get even richer.

¤ Haiti: overthrowing slavery and resisting the IMF by Sadie Robinson
THE SUFFERING of Haiti's people today is rooted in slavery and imperialism. The Times newspaper has described Haiti as "the unluckiest country" while the racist US evangelical Pat Robertson said that Haitians had "swore a pact to the devil" when they rose up against slavery in the 1790s. But it is imperialism, not the resistance to it, which has been the problem.

¤ How US imperialism has devastated Haiti by Peter Hallward
THE EARTHQUAKE in Haiti caused, and continues to cause, such terrible destruction and loss of life because the country is so poor. There are three main reasons for that. Firstly, it is the only place where slavery was overthrown solely by slaves. But it meant a war that lasted 12 years, killed a third of the population, destroyed virtually every city and town, and gutted every plantation.

¤ SA medics en route to Haiti, calls for Aristide
by Gia Nicolaides and Jean-Jacques Cornish
A South African medical team will be landing in New York on Saturday morning before heading to the earthquake devastated island of Haiti.
Meanwhile survivors of the quake are calling for the return of their ousted former president. Another man in the group, who identified himself as Auguste, said that it is remarkable that a concrete monument constructed by Aristide over the road from the palace appears unscathed.

¤ The hate and the quake in Haiti by Sir Hilary Beckles
Buried beneath the rubble of imperial propaganda, out of both Western Europe and the United States, is the evidence, which shows that Haiti's independence was defeated by an aggressive North-Atlantic alliance that could not imagine their world inhabited by a free regime of Africans as representatives of the newly emerging democracy.

¤ Two more survivors in the rubble as rescue scaled back
¤ Rescuers pull Haitian man from deep under rubble
¤ Haiti quake death toll surpasses 111,000 as search-rescue phase ends

French rescue workers say they have located a person under rubble who has survived the earthquake that struck Haiti 11 days ago.

¤ Haitian Food Supply Vulnerable
¤ Haitian kids go missing
PORT-AU-PRINCE: Aid agencies yesterday continued to warn against adopting children from earthquake-ravaged Haiti, amid unconfirmed reports that a number of children who had gone missing from hospitals in the devastated country may have been trafficked.
¤ Haiti: Bonanza for Foreign Mining Companies
Interview with Marguerite Laurent / Ezili Dantò
¤ Haiti ends rescue phase as two more survivors found

¤ Haiti quake toll tops 110,000
¤ Will promises of a new Haiti endure?
¤ Haiti ends quake rescue operations
Government has decided there is little hope of searchers finding more earthquake survivors, UN says
¤ Stars unite to help devastated Haiti in international, multi-network telethon

¤ Judges Urge Congress to Act on Indefinite Terrorism Detentions
¤ Bolivia, Costa Rica hit by strong earthquakes

¤ It's Time for a New Relationship With Bolivia
Evo Morales is the most popular President Bolivia has ever had, winning re-election last month with 64% of the vote in spite of the fact that he is often at loggerheads with Bolivia's upper classes who have control over the country's print and television media. Evo Morales and representatives of the US government have a history of tense relations as well.

¤ Obama to indefinitely imprison detainees without charges
One of the most intense controversies of the Bush years was the administration's indefinite imprisoning of "War on Terror" detainees without charges of any kind. So absolute was the consensus among progressives and Democrats against this policy that a well-worn slogan was invented to object: a "legal black hole."

Haiti's tragedy: A crime of US imperialism
Posted: Saturday, January 23, 2010

¤ The hate and the quake in Haiti

¤ Haiti, Katrina, and Why I Won’t Give To Haiti Through the Red Cross
What's charitably given isn't always charitably distributed. In 21st century American and its empire, our corporate and military elite wield immense power. Corporate philanthropy serves corporate interests, not human interests, and corporate control over government, culture and media ensure that even funds donated by ordinary citizens can be directed and harvested for elite purposes too.

¤ The myth of Haiti's lawless streets

¤ When the Media Is the Disaster: Covering Haiti by Rebecca Solnit
Soon after almost every disaster the crimes begin: ruthless, selfish, indifferent to human suffering, and generating far more suffering. The perpetrators go unpunished and live to commit further crimes against humanity. They care less for human life than for property. They act without regard for consequences. I'm talking, of course, about those members of the mass media whose misrepresentation of what goes on in disaster often abets and justifies a second wave of disaster. I'm talking about the treatment of sufferers as criminals, both on the ground and in the news, and the endorsement of a shift of resources from rescue to property patrol. They still have blood on their hands from Hurricane Katrina, and they are staining themselves anew in Haiti.

¤ Haiti, Again? by Phyllis Bennis
This time, of course, the U.S. is not trying to prevent humanitarian assistance. President Obama made all the right commitments to the Haitian people, promising emergency assistance AND that we would stand with them into the future. He made clear that it is indeed the role and responsibility of government to respond to humanitarian crises, and that's a good thing (even if he also anointed his predecessors to lead a parallel privatized response). But the reality is, on the ground, some of the same problems that we've seen so many times before have already emerged, as U.S. military forces take charge, as the United Nations is pushed aside by overbearing U.S. power, as desperate humanitarian needs take a back seat to the Pentagon's priorities. Saturday morning's New York Times quoted Secretary of State Clinton saying, "we are working to back them [the Haitian government] up but not to supplant them." That was good. But then she said she expected the Haitian government to pass an emergency decree including things like the right to impose curfews. "The decree would give the government an enormous amount of authority, which in practice they would delegate to us," Clinton said. So much for "not supplanting them."

¤ Haiti's tragedy: A crime of US imperialism by Bill Van Auken

The estimated 200,000 who have died, the quarter million or more injured and the three million whose homes have been destroyed are victims not merely of a natural catastrophe. The lack of infrastructure, the poor quality of construction in Port-au-Prince and the impotence of the Haitian government to organize any response are determining factors in this tragedy. These social conditions are the product of a protracted relationship between Haiti and the United States, which, ever since US Marines occupied the island nation for nearly 20 years beginning in 1915, has treated the country as a de-facto colonial protectorate.

¤ Costly victory for Haiti—UWI historian by Michelle Loubon
With a sense of pride, historians note the island of Hispaniola (Haiti) was the first black republic in the Western Hemisphere. Liberator Jacques Dessalines declared Haiti a republic in 1804, thereby ridding it from the most oppressive manifestations of slavery. On the flip side, they noted the grave historical injustice—Haiti was the only country to pay its conquerors compensation. France demanded 90 million gold francs, more than US$20 billion for Haitians' freedom. In a telephone interview yesterday, eminent UWI historian Prof Bridget Brereton lent her voice to the chorus calling for reparations from France and the US. Brereton said, "I agree with the various voices, including Barbados' Sir Hilary Beckles saying France has a huge moral obligation to Haiti because of the terribly unjust requirements which France imposed on Haiti."

¤ Haiti needs water, not occupation by Mark Weisbrot
The US has never wanted Haitian self-rule, and its focus on 'security concerns' has hampered the earthquake aid response

¤ Haiti: The Spectacle by Robert C. Koehler
Haiti falls apart and America's journalists are on the ground, bringing us the spectacle of devastation. We care, we donate, we shake our heads in horror at the human toll of poverty. A bare foot sticks out of a pile of cinder blocks. "They've been digging for five hours," says Anderson Cooper. He sticks his mike in the rubble. Oh my God, she's alive. We can hear her screaming! "They only have this one shovel." OK, freeze frame. Something is so wrong with this picture...

¤ The Disaster Within The Disaster:It's Time To Investigate the Aid Fiasco by Danny Schechter
Haiti remains a death trap, with an aid program that has sat by and watched thousands die without relief. The International Red Cross describes the situation there as a catastrophe while the American Red Cross reports raising more than $100 million dollars thanks to texting technologies and backing from the White House. Raising money is their specialty; delivering aid is not.

¤ Marine unit headed for Afghanistan now rerouted to Haiti

¤ Haiti rejects Dominican Republic troops-envoys
¤ Tensions rise as US troops patrol Haiti
¤ Haiti aftershock stirs panic, could hinder last-ditch rescue efforts
¤ Rescue teams lose hope as cries from the rubble fall silent
¤ CIA Contractor Now Flying Spy Drone Over Haiti
¤ Haiti's mass graves swell; doctors fear more death

¤ Aftershock rocks Haiti - aid effort improves

¤ Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations plane with relief aid for Haiti stranded in Caracas
Russia's Charges d'Affaires in Venezuela Vladimir Tokmakov told Itar-Tass that the IL-76 plane was being grounded in Caracas because the U.S. air traffic controllers, who are in control of the Port –au-Prince airport, were constantly delaying permission to fly into the Haitian capital.

¤ The Tragedy of Haiti ... and Us

¤ The siege of Haiti
THE RING of mighty warships off the coast of Port-au-Prince is a stark symbol of the true intentions of the U.S. government in its "humanitarian" mission following Haiti's devastating earthquake.
The Navy and Coast Guard vessels aren't there with food or water or rescue teams. They're on patrol to make sure that Haitians don't escape the disaster and try to get to the United States.

¤ A Thorn in the Side of the U.S. Military in Haiti
Watch the U.S. media and its coverage of the crisis in Haiti, and you get the impression that Washington is a benevolent power doing its utmost to help with emergency relief in the Caribbean island nation. But tune into al-Jazeera English or South American news network Telesur and you come away with a very different view. I was particularly struck by one hard hitting al-Jazeera report posted on You Tube which serves as a fitting antidote to the usual mainstream fare.

¤ Haitians dying by the thousands as US escalates military intervention
Thousands of Haitians are dying every day for lack of medical care and supplies, according to a leading humanitarian aid group. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has announced that it is expanding the US military presence in the country, maintaining Washington’s priority of troops over humanitarian aid.

¤ It's the "New Haiti!"
¤ Profiting From Haiti’s Crisis
¤ Haiti's suffering is a result of calculated impoverishment
¤ Children missing from Haiti hospitals
¤ US Policy: More War, Less Relief

¤ The Merchants of Fear: Israel's Profiting from Homeland Insecurity
"In order to exploit that resource to the full, Israel needed the likes of Chertoff, Lieberman, Schumer and Specter to hype the concept of “homeland security” in the United States. Americans, however, should have been asking a couple of pertinent questions. Which homeland? And whose security?"

¤ Hans Blix warned Tony Blair Iraq might not have WMD

¤ How to Squander the Presidency in One Year

¤ Little Surprising in Absence of Progressive Social Movement

¤ Defense Secretary Robert Gates Confirms Blackwater in Pakistan

¤ Judges Urge Congress to Act on Indefinite Terrorism Detentions

¤ Big Banks Have Already Figured Out The Loophole In Obama’s New Rules

¤ Russia warns against rushing to Iran sanctions

Haiti: Guns or food?
Posted: Wednesday, January 20, 2010

¤ Haiti: Guns or food? by Real News
As aid starts to trickle in, and the extent of the horror becomes known, decisions are already being made that will affect the Haiti that emerges from this. Ansel Herz reports live from Port-Au-Prince on the role that the deployed US troops are playing, while author Peter Hallward weighs in on the role that the US has played in Haiti's recent history and shares his concerns that post-earthquake Haiti will further cement the domination of the Haitian people by foreigners.

¤ Profiting From Haiti's Misery - by Benjamin Dangl
US corporations, private mercenaries, Washington and the International Monetary Fund are using the crisis in Haiti to make a profit, promote unpopular neoliberal policies, and extend military and economic control over the Haitian people. In the aftermath of the earthquake, with much of the infrastructure and government services destroyed, Haitians have relied on each other for the relief efforts, working together to pull their neighbors, friends and loved ones from the rubble. One report from IPS News in Haiti explained, "In the day following the quake, there was no widespread violence. Guns, knives and theft weren't seen on the streets, lined only with family after family carrying their belongings. They voiced their anger and frustration with sad songs that echoed throughout the night, not their fists."

¤ No, Mister, You Can't Share My Pain - by John Maxwell
(¤ jamaicaobserver.com) If you shared my pain you would not continue to make me suffer, to torture me, to deny me my dignity and my rights, especially my rights to self-determination and self-expression. Six years ago you sent your Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to perform an action illegal under the laws of your country, my country and of the international community of nations. It was an act so outrageous, so bestially vile and wicked that your journalists and news agencies, your diplomats and politicians to this day cannot bring themselves to truthfully describe or own up to the crime that was committed when US Ambassador James Foley, a career diplomat, arrived at the house of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide with a bunch of CIA thugs and US Marines to kidnap the president of Haiti and his wife.

¤ U.S. troops in Haiti to prevent Aristide's return by Wayne Madsen
Apparently, the so-called media-savvy Obama failed to realize the revolting nature of asking Bush to do anything related to Haiti when people remembered his lack of action over Katrina. Bodies of African-Americans floating in the streets of New Orleans became juxtaposed with the bodies of Afro-Haitians piling up in the streets of Port-au-Prince. But, of course, Obama is the "Max Headroom" of America's political leadership – a talking head – whose rhetorical flourishes speak louder than principles or concrete action.Aristide, from an exile in South Africa imposed by the United States, France, and Canada, vowed to return to Haiti to be with his people in their time of stress and despair. Aristide, a former Roman Catholic priest, served the people of the Haitian slum of La Saline and he understands best the plight of his people. On the other hand, Rene Preval, the U.S. stooge who was placed in power twice by the CIA and the U.S. Southern Command to replace Aristide, once in a fraudulent election (Preval won in 1995 with 88 percent of the vote in a 25 percent voter turnout) and the other in a coup, could only complain to CNN's Sanjay Gupta about not having any place to sleep for the night, "I cannot live in the palace. I cannot live in my own house, because the two collapsed."

¤ Haiti earthquake survivors scavenge for food
For many earthquake victims, even six days after the disaster, the story is still one of frustration as aid is only slowly getting through. While at the airport the debate rages over the prioritising of military flights over civilian aid flights, in makeshift relief camps some earthquake victims are going hungry while others are fighting for food. Al Jazeera's Mike Kirsch reports on the situation from Port-au-Prince. (Jan 19, 09)

¤ US Security Company Offers to Perform "High Threat Terminations"
Confront "Worker Unrest" in Haiti

¤ Gaza Residents Donate to Haiti Relief Effort
¤ $600m in aid and still we can't get a cup of water
¤ Turkish rescue team puts smiles on Haitians' faces

¤ HAITI: Search teams running out of time
¤ Dead Canadians In Haiti Reach 14, Missing Exceeds 850
¤ Survivors still emerging from wreckage six days after disaster
¤ Haiti earthquake: US denies 'occupying' the country
The US has denied its military has taken charge of Haiti amid claims by France that the Americans were "occupying" the earthquake-ravaged country.

¤ If the Marines Don't Kill You, the Loans Will
US corporations, private mercenaries, Washington and the International Monetary Fund are using the crisis in Haiti to make a profit, promote unpopular neoliberal policies, and extend military and economic control over the Haitian people. In the aftermath of the earthquake, with much of the infrastructure and government services destroyed, Haitians have relied on each other for the relief efforts, working together to pull their neighbors, friends and loved ones from the rubble.

¤ US Security Company Offers to Perform "High Threat Terminations"
We saw this type of Iraq-style disaster profiteering in New Orleans and you can expect to see a lot more of this in Haiti over the coming days, weeks and months. Private security companies are seeing big dollar signs in Haiti thanks in no small part to the media hype about “looters.” After Katrina, the number of private security companies registered (and unregistered) multiplied overnight. Banks, wealthy individuals, the US government all hired private security.

¤ Nicaragua invites Russia to help build canal between Atlantic, Pacific Oceans

¤ What I've Learned About U.S. Foreign Policy Video

¤ Murders at Guantánamo

¤ The Guantánamo “Suicides”: A Camp Delta sergeant blows the whistle
According to the NCIS, each prisoner had fashioned a noose from torn sheets and T-shirts and tied it to the top of his cell's eight-foot-high steel-mesh wall. Each prisoner was able somehow to bind his own hands, and, in at least one case, his own feet, then stuff more rags deep down into his own throat. We are then asked to believe that each prisoner, even as he was choking on those rags, climbed up on his washbasin, slipped his head through the noose, tightened it, and leapt from the washbasin to hang until he asphyxiated. The NCIS report also proposes that the three prisoners, who were held in non-adjoining cells, carried out each of these actions almost simultaneously.

flashback ¤ Officials Report Suicide of Guantánamo Detainee

¤ Profiting From Haiti's Crisis
¤ Disaster Capitalism Headed to Haiti

¤ The Arrogance of Empire, Detailed
In the first week of 2010, five US soldiers were killed in Afghanistan. The last week of 2009 saw the deaths of eight CIA agents there. Several more Afghan civilians were killed during this period, including the apparent executions of several young boys by persons either in the US military or working with them. In addition, insurgent forces targeted a Karzai government in official in eastern Khost and launched rockets at the site of a future US consulate in Herat.

¤ The Lesson of Haiti
¤ The Right Testicle of Hell: History of a Haitian Holocaust

¤ The Perils of International Aid
There is a great risk that one of the largest relief operations in history will be similar in nature to the tsunami relief efforts in 2004, unless a radically different approach to a reconstruction model is adopted. Haiti was partially destroyed by an earthquake measuring 7 on the Richter scale. We have all shed tears and the media, as they bombard us with apocalyptic images, report on financial pledges generous States have made.

¤ Wall Street's Power Grab
You almost could hear the bankers heave a sigh of relief when Haiti's earthquake knocked the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission hearings off the front pages and evening news broadcasts last week. At stake is Wall Street's power grab seeking to centralize policy control firmly in its own hands by neutralizing the government's regulatory agencies.

¤ The Blackout on Cuban Aid to Haiti

Haiti: The Aid Masquerade
Posted: Sunday, January 17, 2010

¤ More Updates on Haiti Earthquake

¤ Help Haiti: The Unforgiven Country Cries Out
The relentlessly maintained, deliberately inflicted political and economic ruin of Haiti has a direct bearing on the amount of death and devastation that the country is suffering today after the earthquake. It will also greatly cripple any recovery from this natural disaster. As detailed below, Washington’s rapacious economic policies have destroyed all attempts to build a sustainable economy in Haiti, driving people off the land and from small communities into packed, dangerous, unhealthy shantytowns, to try to eke out a meager existence in the sweatshops owned by Western elites and their local cronies

¤ Haiti: opportunity knocks
For years, UN 'peacekeepers' have slaughtered thousands of Haitians, and the residents have been put through rigged election procedures. Lavalas members, priests, and activists have been subject to political imprisonment and murder, some of them characterised as 'gang' members. This is all for the aid of sweatshop bosses such as Andy Apaid, and the multinationals principally based in the US and Canada that benefit enormously from the exploitation of Haitian labour.

Flashback ¤ Haiti Dossier

¤ Haiti: The Aid Masquerade
The horror in Haiti is beyond anything we can imagine in the U.S., but this apocalyptic catastrophe has something in common with Hurricane Katrina; in both cases, a terrible natural disaster was made infinitely worse by human negligence and incompetence.

¤ Haiti: Aid effort facing an uphill battle

¤ US provides more troops than aid
More than 48 hours after a devastating earthquake leveled much of the city of Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, millions are without shelter, power, food and water. The estimates of the death toll range from 50,000 (the Red Cross) to ten times that number, and with each passing hour, the higher figures seem more and more likely.

¤ The history that “binds” the US and Haiti

¤ Earthquake Survivors Dying as Aid Struggles to Reach Haiti

¤ “Bush Was Responsible for Destroying Haitian Democracy”
I hope that American media will not just continue to—the refrain of Haiti being the poorest country in the western hemisphere, but will come to ask the question, why? What distinguishes Haiti from the rest of the Caribbean? Why are the other countries, like the country in which I live, Saint Kitts, middle-income and successful countries, and Haiti is mired in economic despair? What happened? And who’s had a hand in it? If Haiti has been under a series of serial dictatorship, who armed the dictators?

¤ Hillary Clinton to visit Haiti Saturday
¤ MTV Networks reveals Haiti relief plans
¤ Nameless corpses pile up in Haiti mass graves
¤ Enormity of Haiti quake disaster clear from the sky
¤ Looters roam Port-au-Prince as earthquake death toll estimate climbs
¤ Patrick Cockburn: The US is failing Haiti – again

¤ 'Even Charles Manson could beat him now'

¤ Yemen - The Return Of Old Ghosts
What I find so fascinating about the reporting of the War on Terror is the way almost all of it ignores history - as if it is a conflict happening outside time. The Yemen is a case in point. In the wake of the underpants bomber we have been deluged by a wave of terror journalism about this dark mediaeval country that harbours incomprehensible fanatics who want to destroy the west. None of it has explained that only forty years ago the British government fought a vicious secret war in the Yemen against republican revolutionaries who used terror, including bombing airliners.

¤ Yemen: Deja Vu All Over Again
¤ Flight 253: Anatomy of a Cover-Up
¤ Obama wants record $708 billion for wars next year

¤ White House Backs Away from Net Neutrality; Hard Left Interest Groups Plod On

¤ Chavez raises Venezuelan minimum wage 25 percent

Haitian Earthquake: Made in the USA
Posted: Thursday, January 14, 2010

¤ Catastrophe in Haiti
"The media coverage of the earthquake is marked by an almost complete divorce of the disaster from the social and political history of Haiti," Haiti solidarity activist Yves Engler said in an interview. "They repeatedly state that the government was completely unprepared to deal with the crisis. This is true. But they left out why."

¤ Our Role in Haiti's Plight
Any large city in the world would have suffered extensive damage from an earthquake on the scale of the one that ravaged Haiti's capital city on Tuesday afternoon, but it's no accident that so much of Port-au-Prince now looks like a war zone.

¤ Haitian Earthquake: Made in the USA
Gee, I wonder how that happened? You'd think Haiti would be loaded. After all, it made a lot of people rich. How did Haiti get so poor? Despite a century of American colonialism, occupation, and propping up corrupt dictators? Even though the CIA staged coups d'état against every democratically elected president they ever had?

¤ Pat Robertson on Haiti Disaster
"Something happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about. They were under the heel of the French, you know Napoleon the Third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the Devil. They said 'We will serve you if you will get us free from the Prince.' True story. And so the Devil said, 'OK it's a deal.' And they kicked the French out. The Haitians revolted and got something themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after another."

¤ Haiti's Crisis
¤ 7.0 Earthquake Devastates Haiti
¤ Major Earthquake Devastates Haiti
¤ Who's running Haiti? No one, say the people

¤ Helen Thomas deviates from the terrorism script
Following up on Thursday's post concerning our collective refusal to discuss how American actions and policies fuel Terrorism: at a White House press conference yesterday with Janet Napolitano and John Brennan, Helen Thomas shows -- yet again -- that she's one of the very few White House reporters willing to deviate from approved orthodoxy scripts. She asks the prohibited question about the motives of Terrorists, and keeps asking as she receives complete non-responses, until they all just decide to ignore her

¤ What You're Not Hearing about Haiti (But Should Be)
¤ Answering Helen Thomas on Why They Want to Harm Us
¤ The Transparent Cabal Video
¤ Israeli general Brigadier-General Uzi Eilam denies Iran is nuclear threat
¤ Israelis Reject US Loan 'Threat'
¤ Venezuela Says Its Jets Intercepted U.S. Plane

¤ Is Anyone Telling Us The Truth?
If we are to believe the U.S. government, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged al-Qaida "mastermind" behind 9/11, outwitted the CIA, the NSA, indeed all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies as well as those of all U.S. allies including Mossad, the National Security Council, NORAD, Air Traffic Control, Airport Security four times on one morning, and Dick Cheney, and with untrained and inexperienced pilots pulled off skilled piloting feats of crashing hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center towers, and the Pentagon, where a battery of state of the art air defenses somehow failed to function.

¤ Holding Corporations Accountable for Apartheid Crimes
A landmark class action case is under way in a New York federal court, with victims of apartheid in South Africa suing corporations that they say helped the pre-1994 regime. Among the multinational corporations are IBM, Fujitsu, Ford, GM and banking giants UBS and Barclays. The lawsuit accuses the corporations of “knowing participation in and/or aiding and abetting of the crimes of apartheid; extrajudicial killing; torture; prolonged unlawful detention; and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.” Attorneys are seeking up to $400 billion in damages.

¤ Seven children killed in Somalia shelling
¤ Blackwater in Somalia?
¤ George W. Obama
¤ Exporting Corruption: 3/4 of Afghan Corruption Cases Involve Westerners
¤ The Weird Factor

A convenient bomb plot
Posted: Saturday, January 9, 2010

¤ The Anti-Empire Report: The American Elite
Lincoln Gordon died a few weeks ago at the age of 96. He had graduated summa cum laude from Harvard at the age of 19, received a doctorate from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, published his first book at 22, with dozens more to follow on government, economics, and foreign policy in Europe and Latin America. He joined the Harvard faculty at 23.

¤ Detroit Airliner Terror Incident: A Convenience Theory
I am not one that sees conspiracies everywhere, but I do like a good Convenience Theory. Like the one that is coming together out of the botched terror attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up an airliner in Detroit just as it was arriving. For the last couple of months Saudi Arabia has been bombarding Yemen with fighter jets. Just recently the US sent cruise missles into Yemen in a reported attempt to hit Al Qaeda sites. Also, US fighter jets joined the attacks on Yemen. In return, Al Qaeda reportedly issued a warning that it would avenge US raids.

¤ A convenient bomb plot
So, just when the US public is growing increasingly weary of these trillion-dollar wars that are killing young Americans and innocent villagers with no end in sight and for no credible purpose, and just when Washington wants to expand its regional war into Yemen - we conveniently have the "Christmas Day bomb plot" with a Yemeni connection. Now, that is a gift for US war aims.
¤ Now it appears that the Detroit bound Airline Terrorist Suspect from Nigeria has supposed links to Yemen. Or at least the suspect is supposedly saying his bomb was made in Yemen.

¤ The Airport Scanner Scam
Known by their opponents as "digital strip search" machines, the full-body scanners use one of two technologies—millimeter wave sensors or backscatter x-rays—to see through clothing, producing ghostly images of naked passengers. Yet critics say that these, too, are highly fallible, and are incapable of revealing explosives hidden in body cavities—an age-old method for smuggling contraband. If that's the case, a terrorist could hide the entire bomb works within his or her body, and breeze through the virtual strip search undetected.

¤ New scanners break child porn laws
¤ Cuba denounces new U.S. airline security measures
¤ Yemen dismisses Al Qaeda threat as 'exaggerated'

¤ Yemen is latest target in US war
Yemen has become the latest "rogue state" to be targeted in the US-led "war on terror". There has been a flood of rhetoric about Yemen, portraying the country as a "failed state" and a hotbed of extremism, swarming with Al Qaida terrorists and warring tribes. Obama's adminstration said last week that it plans to more than double the US's "security assistance" – military aid – to the country.

¤ Nigeria slams 'discriminatory' flight checks
¤ Rabbis to US Ambassador: Time to 'Go Biblical' with Arabs
¤ US general urges strip search of Muslim men

¤ 44 US drone hits in Pakistan killed 700 civilians in 2009
Of the 44 Predator strikes carried out by the American drones in the tribal areas of Pakistan in 12 months of 2009, only five were able to hit their actual targets, killing five key Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders, but at the cost of around 700 innocent civilian lives.

¤ The 'War on Terror' Has Been About Scaring People, Not Protecting Them
So there was no ticking time bomb. No urgent need ever arose to torture anybody who was withholding crucial details, so that civilisation as we know it could be saved in the nick of time. No wires had to be tapped, special prisons erected or international accords violated. No innocent people had to be grabbed off the street in their home country, transported across the globe and waterboarded. Drones, daisy-cutters, invasions, occupations were, it has transpired, not necessary.

¤ "Smart power" and "bear traps" in the Hindu Kush

¤ World's Sole Military Superpower's 2 Million-Troop, $1 Trillion Wars

¤ Prostitution in the US government

¤ 2010: U.S. To Wage War Throughout The World
¤ Afghans condemn 'civilian deaths'

¤ Hundreds of Afghans rally against NATO forces
¤ CIA bomber was al-Qaeda double agent, US media say

¤ How about asking WHY?
In their refusal to ask the question of why, really, Muslims are being radicalized, President Obama and Prime Minister Brown are no different from their immediate predecessors.
When George "Dubya" Bush and Tony Blair ruled the world and were pressing ahead with their "war on terrorism", I used to ask this question: Are they ignorant of history and don't know what they are doing and therefore stupid, or do they and/or some of the powerful vested interests which pull their strings want a Clash of Civilizations, Judeo-Christian v Islamic?

¤ 'Negro' Race Choice On Census Form Sparks Outrage

¤ Cancer – The Deadly Legacy of the Invasion of Iraq
Forget about oil, occupation, terrorism or even Al Qaeda. The real hazard for Iraqis these days is cancer. Cancer is spreading like wildfire in Iraq. Thousands of infants are being born with deformities. Doctors say they are struggling to cope with the rise of cancer and birth defects, especially in cities subjected to heavy American and British bombardment.

¤ Liberty Has Been Lost
¤ Al-Qaida Uses U.S., U.S. Plays Along
¤ 'Flaws' in key Lockerbie evidence

¤ CIA reportedly ordered Blackwater to murder 9/11 suspect

Venezuela's Chavez Announces Currency Devaluation
Posted: Saturday, January 9, 2010

By Kiraz Janicke
January 09, 2010 - Venezuelanalysis.com

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced a devaluation of the official exchange rate of the bolivar currency and the creation of a second rate denominated the "oil bolivar" for non-essential imports, in a nationally televised address on Friday.

The bolivar would be devalued from 2.15 per dollar to 2.6 per dollar, Chavez said, while the "oil bolivar" will be pegged at 4.3 per dollar. The measure represents a 17 percent and 50 percent devaluation respectively.

The Venezuelan government moved to regulate foreign currency exchange in 2003 after a two month long bosses lockout in the oil industry aimed at ousting the democratically elected Chavez from power caused an estimated $20 billion damage to the economy. The latest devaluation is the first since an 11 percent devaluation in March 2005.
Full Article : venezuelanalysis.com

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