If this ruthless reality were not so, one might wistfully suggest that there was, at that Donor meeting, at least one good example of what real humanitarian help looks like and suggest examination of the proposal outlined in the Statement of the Cuban Foreign Minister at the UN Donors Meeting on Haiti .
Below we post the Haiti-Cuba proposal for building health care in Haiti that considers the needs of the poorest of the poor, Haiti's realities and is without the unseemly large budget and consumerish waste of the cork-popping champaign fanfare of the UN/Papa-Mama Clinton March 31st media show and pledging session that just took place. It is worthy of all our support. If only this Haiti-Cuba health care proposal that's made with the cooperation of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and other countries and humanitarian organizations, could be brought into application without the US/Euro policymakers' interference and use of their egotistical NGOs and mercenary military contractors to block it. If only their inhumanity, narcissism and vulgarity could be held in abeyance while heart sore human beings, living under water-logged tents, old cardboard and wet sheets, people with damaged and inflamed limbs, some also tear-gassed by the UN for protesting their conditions; if only their inhumanity, narcissism and vulgarity could be held in abeyance as Haiti tries to recover from the ravages of the US/Euro neoliberalism and despotism that exacerbated a 7.0 earthquake so that it took the lives of over 300,000? (How did the Red Cross spend $106 Million Dollars in Haiti?)
While the champaign bottles were popping at the UN for the pledging session's success - $5billion, 10 billion pledged for the future. Whose future? Haitians in Haiti need a hoe, a tractor, some lifting equipment, so they might not have to use their bare hands to dig out the corpses still under the rubble almost three months after the earthquake. Just a hoe, a tractor - we'll do the work. But no, the Internationals are going to give us $5 billion later, be happy. Wait for it as you die inside because your daughter, son, wife, mother, father, cousin and friends are still dead under the rubble and no one will help you lift up the cement blocks and steel cables so you might bury them. Yep, you have no food, no water, no medical treatment, no job to go to, no shelter today, but don't worry, "The international community pledged $5.3 billion Wednesday for earthquake-shattered Haiti over the next two years, launching an ambitious effort not just to rebuild the hemisphere's poorest nation but also to transform it into a modern state." ( $5.3 billion pledged over 2 years at U.N. conference for Haiti reconstruction.)
For $5.3 to $10 billion in earthquake reconstruction funds not yet collected, the Preval government "agree" that an Interim Commission for the Reconstruction of Haiti (HRIC), composed of 13 foreigners and 7 Haitians, will approve disbursements for rebuilding projects. The World Bank will hold collected donor funds and distribute said funds to "Haiti" rebuilding projects it deems worthy. Then, another group of non-Haitians will supervise the Haitian government's implementation of the projects the World Bank strategists’ think worthy.
So, while the United States, the largest shareholder in the World Bank, openly confirms its domination of Haiti, continues to trample on Haitian sovereignty with the added benefit of having the out that the Haitian government - not them, not their NGOs - failed in its implementation of projects; while that little understanding was being thoroughly fastened down at the UN Donor meeting, right then at Fort National Haiti, the people are just walking over corpses and digging on the spot they find them to bury them. Others are burning the remains they find so that the stench and airborne disease won't kill the living. But don't worry. Remember, papa and mama Clinton cares, the UN cares, Preval cares because at the UN Donor session the $5.3 billion amount "exceeded by more than $1 billion the goal set ahead of a conference co-sponsored by the United Nations and the U.S. government. In all, countries, development banks and nongovernmental groups pledged nearly $10 billion for Haiti in years to come." (http://bit.ly/97OTp6 .)
In years to come...
What is needed now is to finish extracting and burying the remaining dead, nurture the living, find a job to survive, get shelter from the elements and coming rains and hurricanes, medical treatment, food, water and get rid of the foreign experts who say their country is financing the Haitian government budget and therefore are the ones to represent the people of Haiti. Meanwhile Senator Dodd of Connecticut and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee are not going to these rulers of Haiti for the failure of the so-called Haitian government but asking for more foreigners like them to take charge despite the Internationals' six-year dismal failures in Haiti since the 2004 Bush bi-centennial regime change.
Besides, what can the people under water-logged tarps and tents do with the abstract $5.3 billion pledged by these Internationals? A backhoe, tractor, some seeds to plant food and fruit trees, some electricity, in-Haiti production of all daily necessities, shelter, sanitation, a wheelchair, a prosthetic limb to replace the one cut off by the quake’s ravages, a safe place to live, food, running water, antibiotics, some compassion and a living wage job to keep one from thinking about the lost of one's everything, would be helpful. Like now, per chance? Using, not foreign resources, but Haiti's gold, petrol, iridium, uranium, bauxite, limestone and the expertise of Haitians from the US, Canada, France, Latin America or the Caribbean who are willing to VOLUNTEER their time and transfer their skills to native Haitians for the nation's good - to build Haitian capacity not NGO capacity in Haiti.
But alas, the West dreams of riding the world economic recession and political dangers for themselves on the backs of Haiti's dead to the tune of the $5.3, $10 billion do-gooder image they've siphoned off for themselves. Officialdom's policymakers dream of doing more of what they've done in Haiti these last nightmarish six-years and of using the earthquake windfalls to build tourist enclaves and waterfront casinos in Site Soley, Fort National and throwing out the Black Haitian majority as was done in New Orleans.
So why bother against these dreams of the BlackBerry-smartphone contingent? Against the NGOs' useless waste of money, their setting up projects where no Haitians participate, justifying their jobs by holding meetings upon meetings with the people in the camps but with no follow-up except their trophy reports/press releases and conferences to show direct connection to justify their existence?
"Bellerive (Haiti's Prime Minister) and a consortium of well-known Haitian figures, such as Reginald Boulos, worked on a document concerning the economic future of Haiti. The text does not explore the amazing opportunities offered by the exploitation of Haiti’s mining and oil resources, nor does it mentioned any of the serious studies done on the subject. Instead, it presents agriculture as the main alternative to resolve Haiti’s problems. By ignoring the question of Haiti’s natural resources, it is as if the message was: there will be looting, pillage. But we will give you a little piece of bread... The peasants may only receive a little of the leftovers from the NGOs but at least they will eat bread…. One bag of rice against one bag of Gold…" (-- See, Shocking declarations made by Prime Minister Bellerive about the presence of gold, oil & iridium in Haiti | (Video) | In French .)
Haiti has oil, iridium, uranium, copper, coal, limestone, the purest marble and, in terms of its gold, "$10 million dollars have been invested by CFI (the World Bank private sector) in relationship with the IMF for a project worth billions of dollars." Where is this information measured, factored, in these UN/US-sponsored reconstruction plans and UN Donor media shows?
Like always, we're mostly on our own. Just different Haitians are dying, in jail and being abused and tear-gassed by the UN. Oceans of our blood have poured and watered the soil upon which Haiti stands.
For whose entertainment shall we sing our agony? In what hopes? That the destroyers, aspiring to extinguish us, will suffer conciliatory remorse at the sight of their own fantastic success? The last imbecile to dream such dreams is dead, killed by the saviors of his dreams. (Ayi Kwei Armah, from the book Two Thousand Seasons.)
"And so it is an exercise in futility to go to the perpetrators and executioners of human rights crimes in Haiti in hopes of getting justice for our people. Those who ousted the constitutional government of Haiti – the U.N., which acts as proxy to maintain this international crime, the Haitian lackeys and their State Department masters – are dead inside and cannot hear the cries of the Haitian masses.
It’s not their mission or mandate. For they don’t represent life, liberty, democracy, development and decency, but its opposite." -- Ezili Dantò, Another Haitian independence day under Occupation, Jan. 1, 2009 . (See also, Ezili Dantò of Haiti Interview by A. Omar Muhammad )
Who in Haiti and in the Diaspora is not soul-tired of the unrelenting US/Euro resource war on Haiti masking as humanitarian aid? The Independence Debt Haiti constantly has to pay? (See, The Haitian struggle - the greatest David vs. Goliath battle being played out on this planet.)
"Haiti has paid its dues" says Harry Fouche of the HLLN Relief Delegation and a former Counsul General for Haiti. "...Quebec, Paris, Washington owe, not foreign aid to Haiti, but a debt to Haiti," Fouche insists.
Sadly, all that's been taken from Haiti far from slakes insatiable egos, their passion for domination hidden behind humanitarian imperialism and hypocritical moderation, fueled by cultural hegemony, patriarchy, racism and rank avarice. False charity, false benevolence, false “bringing security to Haiti” doesn't veil Officialdom’s market share impositions and resource wars on independent Black Haiti. Not even barely. This Cuban proposal for health care ought to be brought into application. Really. And if Haiti’s majority had any say, if Haiti had any sovereignty, if the law, the good, the decent and moral had any teeth in these trying of times, there's no doubt, it would be. But the foreigners and their Haitian Blan peyi making mostly more than $500 a day in Haiti from donation funds pilfered from the pain they've caused, exacerbated and made worst through their rule in Haiti are not embarrassed at all. They make more than $500-a day in Haiti happily proclaiming it's kosher for Haitians to make .38cents an hour. And through their self-serving defamation and denigration of Haiti’s Black people and always “evil government” or officials, these modern day slave-making Gran Blan, of all the classes and races, make Haiti’s suffering so ordinary, so natural, so-explainable, even they don’t see their own vulgarity. The day these insatiable vampires in Haiti accept to level the social and economic hierarchies they’ve imposed on Black Haiti, especially on Black Haitian women, and accept to come to “help” for the same .38 cents per hour salary their policymakers deem good enough for Haitians, is the day the majority in Haiti shall take any of them seriously. Until then, the Haitian Revolution shall continue. Liberty or Death. The souls gone shall add to our strength to continue until we’ve stopped or tied-up the Bafyòti (black collaborator), Mundele (white colonist/imperialist) and all their Ndoki – evil forces. E, e, Mbomba, e, e! Kanga Bafyòti. Kanga Mundele. Kanga Ndòki. (The Bwa Kayiman exhortation that began the Haitian Revolution.)
In the last six-years since Bush’s bi-centennial regime change and since the tyrannical NGO industry and US/Euro market privateers took over Haiti, what has worked to assuage the vivid ills inflicted on the poor is the direct help Haitians have provided to each other and the Diaspora remittances. Other than that, with some small exceptions from a few small human rights organizations, Haitians may count on the Cuban doctors whose services do not strip them of their sovereignty, equality, humanity and dignity.
The colonial marketplace called Haiti - which the World Superpower amuses itself with, by apportioning off, at will, to various nations and commercial allies - needs no more to be a Bush-Clinton dream place except to get rid of the recalcitrant African population and import a more submissive workforce. Maybe China has been approached to help in this next step?
