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Haitian President warns of "historical mistake"
Charley Keyes, CNN Sr. Producer
9th March 2010
Haiti must restore its political system, and hold elections, as well as repair the vast physical damage from the January earthquake, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Haitian President Rene Preval said Tuesday.
"President Preval made the very important point that we must work toward elections to ensure the security and legitimacy of the Haitian government," Clinton said. Parliamentary elections set for February were postponed and it is unclear whether the presidential election scheduled for the fall can proceed.
"I assured President Preval that the United States would work with the international community to hold elections as soon as appropriate," Clinton said during a question and answer session at the State Department.
President Preval said he welcomed outside help with elections.
Read the full article:
http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2010/03/09/haitian-president-warns-of-historical-mistake/

Give Haiti Control Over Its Recovery
by Loune Viaud & Monika Kalra Varma
8th March 2010
Since January's devastating earthquake in Haiti, well-meaning experts have proposed an abundance of short-term and long-term recovery solutions. They ask why aid delivery has been so slow, why previous development plans for Haiti have rarely been successful, and why billions of dollars in funding over decades have not improved conditions for the most impoverished people in our hemisphere.
Some blame the government of Haiti, while others, including the organizations we represent, often point fingers at the international community. The simple answer is that those who have the greatest stake in rebuilding Haiti, Haitians themselves, don't now and never have had a real seat at the table.
While Haitian resilience has been duly recognized around the world, few appear to be interested in talking to Haitians about how to rebuild their communities and how the billions likely to be pledged to their country will be used. And no one is talking about what recourse Haitians will have if promised projects are never completed, or worse, pledged money never arrives. Unfortunately, past failures can be found in every community across Haiti - water projects that were promised but never built, resulting in water-borne illness and death; food aid that was delivered, but spoiled or sold in markets below the prices asked by local farmers; non-government organizations that started educational programs, but then shifted priorities, leaving children without access to schools.
Read the rest of the article:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/08-1

Dole out Haiti aid with caution
Monday, March 8, 2010 10:11 AM EST
By Joel Brinkley
Dozens of governments and aid groups are scheduled to meet at the United Nations this month to pledge millions, perhaps billions, in assistance to Haiti. My advice to many of those donors: Stay home.
Sure, everyone wants to help rebuild Haiti and finally turn the country into a thriving, self-sustaining state. But after decades of effort, many of the donors themselves have concluded it's a Sisyphean task. By late January, more than $1 billion had been pledged for emergency earthquake recovery. From 1990 through 2009, donors spent nearly $5 billion on projects there, nearly all of it for naught.
The last event to prompt a spasm of foreign aid came in 2004, after Hurricane Jeanne devastated the island and left 700 people dead. The United Nations asked donor countries to provide $59 million in aid.
That effort spawned introspection because, once again, a flood of money had not changed facts on the ground. Haiti remained the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere. Almost 30 percent of the children still were victims of stunting, meaning they did not grow, mentally or physically. Ten percent still suffered from wasting, meaning they were, essentially, starving to death.
Read the rest of the article:
http://www.rep-am.com/articles/2010/03/09/commentary/469746.txt

Haiti's heartbeat
Voodoo drumming is one of the island's most thrilling musical traditions – and it's being used in the relief effort
By Jude Rogers
3 March 2010 22.30 GMT
A Haitian voodoo priest plays the drums
All-conquering incantations . . . a Haitian voodoo priest plays the drums.
Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty

After the devastating effects of January's earthquake in Haiti, two very different fund-raising musical projects sprang into life. One was a big-budget production full of pop stars that reached No 1. The other was a small-scale affair, knocked together from tapes gathering dust in a bedroom; it featured Haitians drumming and chanting. Called Haiti Vodou: The Voodoo Drums of Haiti, it's a world away from Simon Cowell's Every-body Hurts project. And the music isn't just thrilling, it paints a picture of an extraordinary country. (There are other charity projects out there, but none that contrast as powerfully as these two.)
"It's fantastic that Cowell raised millions," says Cardiff-based singer-songwriter Christopher Rees, who put Haiti Vodou together. "But the song he chose was full of pity. There is a resilience in these people that not many people know about."
For the last 15 years, Rees has played his folk– and blues-inspired songs around the world, touring with musicians such as John Cale and Kristin Hersh. In October 2002, courtesy of Welsh educational charity The Haiti Fund, Rees spent six weeks travelling around the schools of Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haïtien, using music as a teaching tool. "These children were horribly poor. The resources – even then – were non-existent, but they were so responsive. They loved rhythm games and picked up melodies straightaway. It made me realise how much music was part of their lives."
Read the rest of the article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/mar/03/haiti-voodoo-drumming

HAITI / RUBBLE RADIO (08:03)
27 February 2010
Local radio stations that survived the earthquake in Haiti play a vital role in the country's recovery process through information and entertainment. MINUSTAH
http://www.unmultimedia.org/tv/unifeed/d/14635.html

The Vultures Start To Get Their Claws Into Haiti!
Threads of a Haiti recovery
27 February, 2010
4 a.m. | Jordanie Pinquie Rebeca leans forward and guides a piece of suit-jacket wool and its silky lining into a sewing machine, where they're bound together to be hemmed.
If she does this for eight hours, she will earn US$3.09 ($4.34).
Her boss will ship the pinstriped suit she helped make to the United States, tariff-free. There a shopper will buy it for US$550.
In the quest to rebuild Haiti, the international community and business leaders are dusting off a pre-quake plan to expand its low-wage garment assembly industry as a linchpin of recovery.
President Barack Obama's administration is on board, encouraging US retailers to obtain from Haiti at least 1 per cent of the clothes they sell.
But will that save a reeling country whose economy must be built from scratch?
Few Haitians have steady incomes, and unemployment is unmeasurable; before the quake it was estimated at between 60 and 80 per cent.
In cities, most scrape by selling in the streets, doing odd jobs or relying on remittances from abroad that make up a quarter of Haiti's US$7 billion gross domestic product.
Garments are central to the economic growth plan commissioned by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon last year, a 19-page report written by Oxford University economics professor Paul Collier and promoted by former President Bill Clinton as special envoy to the impoverished nation.
Read the full article:
http://m.nzherald.co.nz/story/world/10628727/

IFC invests in Eurasian Minerals to support Haiti recovery, create jobs
24th February 2010
Photo: Tommy Trenchard

Washington DC/ Port au Prince. — IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, will invest 5.3 million Canadian dollars in Eurasian Minerals Inc to support the company’s gold and copper exploration in Haiti and its other exploration work around the world. This investment reaffirms IFC’s commitment to social and economic growth in Haiti. It also comes at a critical time for supporting the country’s recovery through private sector participation.
This is IFC’s first exploration and mining investment in Haiti, a country whose natural resources have the potential to create much needed jobs and government revenues. Eurasian, a Canadian-based mining exploration company listed on the TSX Venture Exchange (EMX), currently provides employment to up to 800 workers in northern Haiti through an innovative program of short shifts at its exploration sites, which allows more job opportunities for local workers.
“IFC’s support of Eurasian Minerals is sending an important signal to the rest of the world that we are confident and supportive of Haiti’s recovery. We look forward to beginning a long-term partnership with IFC and will draw heavily on their global environmental and social expertise”, said Eurasian Minerals CEO David Cole.
Read the full article:
http://www.dominicantoday.com/dr/economy/2010/2/23/34911/IFC-invests-in-Eurasian-Minerals-to-support-Haiti-recovery-create-jobs

The Haiti Accountability Project - HAP
News Brief
Haiti on edge after steady aftershocks - happened on 2/22
Haiti was rocked by a second series of aftershocks on Tuesday, toppling some structures damaged in the deadly earthquake last month and raising tensions among Haitians already on edge.
The magnitude-4.7 quake rattled the capital at 1:26 a.m. (0626 GMT), followed some seven minutes later by a smaller aftershock whose magnitude was still unknown, according to Eric Calais, a geophysicist from Purdue University who is studying seismic activity in Haiti.
Another aftershock measuring magnitude 4.7 struck on Monday, and it was followed by two other small tremors. They struck near the epicenter of the Jan. 12 earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people.
The U.S. Geological Survey usually detects Haitian quakes of magnitude 4 and above, but smaller tremors often are not detected due to a lack of seismometers in Haiti.
"It's important that people stay cautious," Calais said. "In the next three months, there's a significant risk that there will be an aftershock larger than 4.7."
Read the full report:
http://www.haitiaccountability.org/

Haiti death toll 'could reach 300,000'
The death toll from Haiti's devastating earthquake has topped 222,500, the United Nations has said, after President Rene Preval said the number could eventually reach 300,000.
24th February 2010
Haiti's civil protection agency "estimates that 222,517 people died following the January 12 earthquake, an increase of 5,000 people since the last estimate given a week ago," the UN's humanitarian affairs coordination body said.
With the new figures, the earthquake toll surpasses the death toll of the 2004 Asian tsunami, widely held to be at least 220,000.
Preval said Sunday in an appeal for international aid at a summit of Caribbean leaders that the toll could reach 300,000 in what some experts say could be the worst natural disaster in modern history.
Some 1.2 million were left homeless by the 7.0-magnitude quake.
The revised toll comes as outbreaks of unrest continue to disrupt attempts to resore order to the battered country.
Angry crowds in a seaside slum attacked a group of Voodoo practitioners, pelting them with rocks and halting a ceremony meant to honor victims of last month's deadly earthquake.
Read the full article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/haiti/7302842/Haiti-death-toll-could-reach-300000.html 
 
U.S. Attempts to Erase Haitian Nationhood

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
18th February 2010
"The Haitian people 'need democracy and self determination, said the U.S.-based Black is Back Coalition."
Proud Haiti has been reduced to a de facto "protectorate" of the United States – a grotesque form of non-sovereignty in which the subjugated nation is "protected" by its worst enemy. Namibia under white-ruled South African administration comes to mind, although in Haiti’s case the United Nations does not even pretend to be on the side of the oppressed, acting instead as agent and enforcer for the superpower.
As Haiti writhes under the agony of hundreds of thousands dead, Bill Clinton picks through the bones in search of prime tourist spots and mango plantation sites. America’s most successful snake oil salesman is pleased to do the Haitian people’s thinking, planning and dreaming for them – and quite willing to speak for the afflicted country, as well. "This is an opportunity to reimagine the future for the Haitian people, to build what they want to become, not rebuild what they used to be,'' Clinton told the global oligarchs at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
In one sweeping sentence, Clinton claimed a kind of sovereignty over the Haitian people’s very imaginations, assigning himself the right to filter what was good or bad about Haiti’s past, and what is permissible in the future. Haitians are no longer allowed to possess their own dreams and remembrances, which have apparently been placed in United Nations trusteeship, under control of UN special envoy to Haiti, Bill Clinton.
"MINUSTAH and the U.S. expeditionary force have conspired to starve out what’s left of Cite Soleil."
Read the full article:
http://uruknet.info/index.php?p=m63434&hd=&size=1&l=e

Haiti quake survivor captures video of ordeal

Uploaded 18th February 2010
More than 200,000 people were killed in last month's massive earthquake in Haiti, most of them trapped beneath the ruins of collapsed buildings.
But dozens managed to survive and were eventually pulled from under the rubble.
One young student captured her ordeal on video using her mobile phone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN6mWMso144

UN in record appeal for Haiti aid
19th February 2010
The UN says millions of Haitians still need emergency shelter and urgent sanitation [AFP]


The United Nations has launched its largest appeal ever for a natural disaster to help millions of Haitians displaced by last month's earthquake.
The appeal for nearly $1.5bn made on Thursday is almost three times the world body's initial request made on January 15.
Donors have already pledged $673m, the UN said.
According to the UN, more than 1.2 million Haitians need emergency shelter and urgent sanitation facilities, with up to 2 million more in need of food.
Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, and his special envoy for Haiti, Bill Clinton, the former US president, launched the appeal at a meeting with diplomats in New York on Thursday.
"We are with you," he said, addressing the people of Haiti.
"We will help you to recover and rebuild."
Read the rest of the article:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/02/201021925818950594.html

Haiti reconstruction could cost $14bn
Wednesday, 17 February 2010 15:38
A study has said the scale of devastation in Haiti following last month's earthquake is far worse than in Asia after the 2004 tsunami.
The report from the Washington-based Inter-American Development Bank estimates the quake damage at between $8bn and $14bn.
Read the full report
Factoring in Haiti's population and economic output, the upper estimate would make it the most destructive natural disaster in modern history.
The $14bn figure is the bank's upper estimate for the cost of reconstructing homes, schools, streets and other infrastructure.
The stark assessment comes with Port-au-Prince still lying in ruins more than one month on, with the death toll at more than 200,000.
The Bank said a more detailed accounting of the situation would come in the following months but that its preliminary study showed that the reconstruction cost was likely to be far higher than anticipated.
http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0217/haiti.html

Haiti reconstruction cost may near US$14b
17th February 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Feb 17 — The cost of rebuilding impoverished Haiti after last month’s catastrophic earthquake could reach nearly US$14 billion (RM47.43 billion), making it proportionately the most destructive natural disaster in modern times, economists at the Inter-American Development Bank said on Tuesday.
Their study, which takes into account the magnitude of the January 12 disaster, the number of fatalities and Haiti’s population and per capita GDP, raises previous damage estimates from the quake to between US$8 billion and US$14 billion.
The IADB economists said the Haitian earthquake was especially destructive when viewed in relation to the Caribbean country’s population of nearly 10 million and to its already weak and impoverished economy.
The quake also struck the capital city Port-au-Prince, the centre of the country’s commerce, government and communications, destroying or damaging the presidential palace, the national cathedral, churches and government buildings.
In the IADB study, economists Andrew Powell, Eduardo Cavallo and Oscar Becerra calculated a base estimate of US$8.1 billion in damages estimated for a 250,000 dead-or-missing toll.
But they estimated this figure was likely to be at the low end and concluded that an estimate of US$13.9 billion damages was within the statistical margin of error.
The IADB study said the Haitian government had reported 230,000 dead as of February 10.
Read the full report:
http://themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/world/53403-haiti-reconstruction-cost-may-near-us14b

Informal meeting of the Ministers for Development
The EU to analyse Haiti reconstruction plans and the UN Millennium Goals
17th February 2010
Two women walk past graffiti asking for help in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, after the earthquake. EFE

European post-earthquake aid to Haiti, the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and transatlantic cooperation will be the focus of the EU Informal Meeting of Ministers for Development, to be held on 17 and 18 February in La Granja (Segovia).
Eight Ministers and fifteen Deputy Ministers or Secretaries of State of the EU Member States, together with the new Commissioner for Development, Andris Piebalgs, will take part in the meeting to be chaired by the Spanish Secretary of State for International Cooperation, Soraya Rodríguez.
The meeting agenda includes a discussion of the effectiveness criteria for aid and the international division of labour, as well as innovative mechanisms for financing development.
The Administrator for United States Agency for Development (USAID), Rajiv Shah, and the Chair of the European Parliament Committee on Development, Eva Joly, will be invited to the sessions in order to coordinate post-earthquake action in Haiti.
A few days after the devastating 12 January quake, the EU Ministers for Development met in an extraordinary Council meeting in Brussels to approve a Haiti aid package of over 420 million euros (229 million earmarked for immediate relief).
At the La Granja meeting, the top European officials for cooperation and development will analyse the EU's next initiatives for coordinating humanitarian aid for Haiti, as well as follow-up reconstruction plans.
Read the full report:
http://www.eu2010.es/en/documentosynoticias/noticias/feb16_previogranja.html
 

Contractors in Haiti, Readying to Profit from Disaster?
Tuesday, 16 February 2010 17:05
With the Inter-American Development Bank saying that the reconstruction of Haiti could cost upwards of $14 billion, and with billions in aid already coming in to Haiti, it is vitally important to keep a close eye on where that money is being spent.
The Federal Procurement Data System - Next Generation, has set up a function where you can track contracts awarded for Haiti related work. The list, however, is not exhaustive; there is a message on the site saying that the list only “represents a portion of the work that has been awarded to date.”  For instance the US Agency for International Development lists only two contracts totaling just under $150,000. USAID, however, says that through the Office of Transition Initiatives they have already given $20 million to three companies: Chemonics, Internews, and Development Alternatives Inc. The reality may be that these companies have received even more money than that though. The Miami Herald reported on February 8 that:
The U.S. Agency for International Development has given two assignments for Haiti-related work to two beltway firms involved in international development: Washington, D.C.-based Chemonics International and Bethesda, Md.-based Development Alternatives Inc.
The emergency work assignments, which are worth $50 million each, are likely the first of many the agency will hand out to private firms to help Haiti get on its feet after the devastating quake Jan. 12.
Read the full article:
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/

American Red Cross must explain $175 million in unallocated Haiti donations
Uploaded 15th February 2010

The American Red Cross received $250-million in donations for Haiti; of that $250-million it has used only $80-million. The American Red Cross must explain the $175-million in unallocated Haiti donations!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sc2xP7-_hyo

American Red Cross must explain $175 million in unallocated Haiti donations
16th February 2010
One month ago, singer Wycef Jean's "NGO" (for"Non-Governmental Organization) called "Yelle Haiti" raised just over $1 million to help victims of the 7.0 Haiti Earthquake. At the time, scores of non-profit organizations sprang up to announce some kind of effort to assist the quake-damaged country.
But of all of them, Yelle Haiti received the most attention because of alleged past spending patterns, leading to the awful and unfounded accusation that Wycef Jean was using the money for personal use. In this video made one month ago, Wycef Jean answered his critics:
Wyclef's Personal Statement on the accusations against Yele Haiti
Uploaded 16th February 2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDE8YJac0Wc

Haiti earthquake
The earthquake that killed so many also demolished the island's galleries and destroyed thousands of paintings
By Tom Phillips guardian.co.uk,
Monday 15 February 2010
Number 18 Rue Bouvreuil was once a mecca for lovers of Haitian art. Outside the Musee Galerie d'Art Nader, perched on a hillside overlooking Port-au-Prince, a sign greeted visitors. "On top of the town, top in the arts," it boasted. Inside, the walls were plastered with thousands of paintings recording nearly a century of Haitian history.
Now the three-storey art gallery is gone, reduced to a dusty heap of rubble and torn canvases. Broken picture frames from irreplaceable local masterpieces poke from the gallery's ruins.
"My dad has about 12,000 paintings here and we are trying to save what is left," said Georges Nader, the son of Haiti's best-known art collector and the owner of the gallery, as he scanned the debris. "We have only been able to save about 2,000 of them."
The human cost of Haiti's worst earthquake in more than 200 years – at least 150,000 lives lost – has been well documented. But the disaster also struck a knockout blow to the heart of Haiti's vibrant arts community.
Several galleries were destroyed and thousands of paintings lost under the rubble of flattened government buildings and art museums.
The Cathédrale Sainte-Trinité, built in the early 1920s, was almost completely destroyed, taking with it a series of celebrated 1950s murals depicting scenes from the life of Christ. A painting by Guillaume Guillon Lethière, the 18th century French neoclassical painter, is thought to have been destroyed when the presidential palace collapsed.
"There are paintings from 1905 that have been lost," said Cedoir Sainterne, an artist from the city's Pétionville district. "It's terrible. We are going to have to start all over again."
Nowhere was the destruction greater than at the Musee Galerie d'Art Nader, Haiti's largest private collection of Haitian and Caribbean art.
"When it [the earthquake] started I said, 'What the hell is that?' And I ran out," said Nader, whose father, also called Georges, was one of the biggest patrons of the local art scene. "I was in an 11-storey building and I saw the building shaking and shaking and moving in all directions.
"The next day when I came here and I went downtown I saw everything. I don't think there is any word to explain that [what happened] to the world … You have to be here to see what is going on."
Nader's parents, both 79, survived. When the quake struck they were sleeping in the only room of the museum that emerged unscathed.
Stunned, they fled to the neighbouring Dominican Republic, where Nader says his mother suffered a heart attack. They then headed to Miami. "The first day my reaction was that anything material was not that important for me. When you see your dad is safe and your mum is safe I was OK," said Nader.
"But when I came it was very sad. My dad loves Haitian art. He lives for Haitian art. His life is Haitian art. This is a guy that won't buy a house [because] he would prefer to buy Haitian art."
Read the full article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/15/haiti-earthquake-art-destroyed 
And the Guardian video report:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2010/feb/15/haiti-earthquake-art-collection

More Pain for Devastated Haiti:
Under the Pretense of Disaster Relief, U.S. Running a Military Occupation The rapid mobilization of U.S troops in Haiti was not primarily done for humanitarian reasons; we're likely to see a neoliberal economic plan imposed, at gunpoint if necessary.
February 12, 2010
Official denials aside, the United States has embarked on a new military occupation of Haiti thinly cloaked as disaster relief. While both the Pentagon and the United Nations claimed more troops were needed to provide "security and stability" to bring in aid, according to nearly all independent observers in the field, violence was never an issue. Instead, there appears to be cruder motives for the military response.

...While much of the corporate media fixated on "looters,” virtually every independent observer in Haiti after the earthquake noted the lack of violence. Even Lt. Gen. Keen described the security situation as "relatively calm." One aid worker in Haiti, Leisa Faulkner, said, “There is no security threat from the Haitian people. Aid workers do not need to fear them. I would really like for the guys with the rifles to put them down and pick up shovels to help find people still buried in the rubble of collapsed buildings and homes. It just makes me furious to see multiple truckloads of fellows with automatic rifles."
...Veteran Haiti reporter Kim Ives concurred, explaining to “Democracy Now!”: “Security is not the issue. We see throughout Haiti the population themselves organizing themselves into popular committees to clean up, to pull out the bodies from the rubble, to build refugee camps, to set up their security for the refugee camps. This is a population which is self-sufficient, and it has been self-sufficient for all these years.”
Read the full report:
http://www.alternet.org/story/145647/

Reality in Haiti
Leisa Faulkner
By Seth Sandronsky
This article was published on 02.04.10.

Leisa Faulkner of Cameron Park and 20 volunteers in her aid group, Children’s Hope, rushed to Haiti after its 7.0 earthquake on January 12. The local mother of five sons arrived there two days after the disaster, bringing donations and antibiotics, painkillers and other medical supplies to the victims. It was Faulkner’s 11th visit to Haiti over the past six years. When not pursuing such humanitarian work, she is completing a master’s degree in sociology at Sacramento State. Her special focus is children living in acute poverty.
Describe the scene when you and your organization were in Haiti recently.
At the Matthew 25 House in Port-au-Prince, there is a soccer field in back serving as a large field hospital for post-operation and treatment. Doctors were doing surgeries with flashlights on kitchen tables under tents. Proper surgical equipment, such as surgical saws for amputations, were in short supply, forcing the use of hacksaws. Patients had an incredible need of medications, such as anesthesia.
What did you do there to help ease the suffering of the quake victims?
I helped to organize the pharmacy, fill prescriptions and distribute medications. I also helped with some post-op trauma care.
Read the full report:
http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/content?oid=1364232

Doctors: Haitian may have survived 4 weeks in rubble
8th February 2010
Port-au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) -- A man pulled alive from the rubble of a building in Haiti's capital Monday may have been trapped since the January 12 quake that leveled much of the city, doctors reported.
The 28-year-old man, identified as Evan Muncie, was found in the wreckage of a market where he sold rice, his family told staff at a University of Miami field hospital. He suffered from extreme dehydration and malnutrition, but did not appear to have significant crushing injuries, the doctors said.
"He was emaciated. He hadn't had anything in quite some time. He had open wounds that were festering on both of his feet," said Dr. Mike Connelly, of the university's Project Medishare.
The man told doctors that someone was bringing him water while he was trapped, but doctors told CNN that he sounded confused and at times appeared to believe he was still under the rubble. Connelly said the man must have had some water during the past month to have survived, but Connelly wasn't sure how he would have had access to it.
"Initially, I'm sure he had his senses with him, so maybe he was able to find some kind of resources," Connelly told CNN.
Read the full report:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/02/08/haiti.rescue/index.html?hpt=T2
 
UN threat to Haiti hospitals caught charging patients
From: AFP February 09, 2010 3:20PM
THE United Nations has warned Haiti it will cut off free medicine to hospitals it catches charging patients.
UN officials said that they had received reports that more than a dozen hospitals in the earthquake-stricken country were charging patients for medicine.
When the catastrophic earthquake struck on January 12, authorities immediately decided to make all medical care free.
More than 200 international medical relief groups have sent teams to help and millions of dollars of donated medicine has been flown in.
http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/world/un-threat-to-haiti-hospitals-caught-charging-patients/story-e6frfkui-1225828374718?from=public_rss

Miley Cyrus organises auction for Haiti
9th February 2010
Singer Miley Cyrus has organised an online auction to benefit the relief effort in Haiti, and Britney Spears, Hugh Jackman, Ellen DeGeneres, Julianne Moore, Whoopi Goldberg, Demi Lovato and others will donate items and experiences.
Cyrus is donating several items, including the Herve Leger dress she wore to the 2010 Grammy Awards. Fans can also bid on Spears' 2008 MTV Video Music Awards dress, a set visit to Jackman's new film, Lovato's tour wardrobe and other items.
http://bigpondnews.com/articles/Entertainment/2010/02/09/Miley_Cyrus_organises_
auction_for_Haiti_426745.html

Americans 'trusting God' in Haiti kidnap
9th February 2010
The leader of an American church group, arraigned in court on Monday on kidnapping and conspiracy charges, said she was "trusting God" for the case's outcome and insisted the missionaries would be cleared of wrongdoing.
Laura Silsby, leader of the New Life Children's Refuge, which last month tried to take a busload of children across Haiti's border into the Dominican Republic, was one of five people taken to Haiti's courthouse but the only one to be presented with the prosecutor's case against her.
She later said the three-hour hearing "went very well".
"I am trusting God to reveal all truths, and that we will be released and exonerated of charges," she said.
Silsby added that she and her nine co-defendants "are just waiting for the Haitian legal process" to run its course."
Read the full report:
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/1009995/americans-trusting-god-in-haiti-kidnap

VA – Helping Haiti Everybody Hurts (CDS) 2010-H3X
Posted on 08.02.2010 at 15:49 in Music, Singles/EPs by Lakai
UK CD pressing of this 2010 single, a benefit for the Haiti Disaster Fund. ‘Everybody Hurts’, a cover of the R.E.M. classic, features appearances from Leona Lewis, Kylie Minogue, James Blunt, Cheryl Cole, Take That (with Robbie Williams), Susan Boyle, Michael Buble, Mika, James Morrison and many others. This benefit single was put together by music mogul Simon Cowell. Sony/BMG.


Group notes: Put together by Simon Cowell in order to raise funds for the Haiti earthquake survivors and the rebuilding of Haiti.
And Also… Last But Not Least…
Why Not Make A Donation Yourself? – http://www.hope-for-haiti.org/

Track List:
01. Everybody Hurts
02. Everybody Hurts (Alternative Mix)
Release Name: VA-Helping_Haiti_Everybody_Hurts-(CDS)-2010-H3X
Genre: Rock
Label: Syco / Sony
Quality: 172 Kbps Avg / 44.1 KHz / Joint Stereo
Size: 13.62 MB
Rip Date: 2010-00-00
Store Date: 2010-00-00
Links: NFO – DOWNLOAD
http://www.rlslog.net/va-helping-haiti-everybody-hurts-cds-2010-h3x/

US must be Haiti's watchdog
Ahead of the rainy season there are huge concerns over shelter, sanitation and human rights. The US has a responsibility to help.
By Mark Weisbrot
8th February 2010
Last month actors and human rights advocates Danny Glover and Harry Belafonte, along with the Reverend Jesse Jackson sent a letter to Congress and the Obama administration calling attention to "serious mistakes that have unnecessarily delayed the delivery of medical supplies, water, and other life-saving materials." The letter was also signed by some 90 scholars and Haiti advocates. (Disclosure: I also added my signature).
The letter asked for, among other things, "A public announcement as to what measures our government will take going forward to make sure that the mistakes of the first two weeks are not repeated."
Although the aid delivery situation has since improved, there are still major deficiencies and it is not clear what our government's plan is to prepare for the rainy season, which can begin as early as the end of February; and the hurricane season, which begins in June.
The Washington Post reported on 2 February that there are "hundreds of thousands of desperate people who apparently have not received food and shelter." The medical aid group Doctors Without Borders reports "increased cases of diarrhoea and skin rashes from the poor sanitary conditions of living outside" and warns that "rains could bring more serious diseases like typhoid, measles or dengue."
"Measles is the leading killer of children,'' says Unicef spokesman Kent Page. "In the conditions of these makeshift camps, if there was to be a measles outbreak it would spread like wildfire.''
Read the rest of the article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/feb/08/haiti-rainy-season-us

US military vows indefinite stay in Haiti
6th February 2010
Amid allegations that the US is using Haiti's earthquake to occupy the country, Washington says its military forces would stay in the Caribbean nation as long as needed.
"We are in Haiti as long as we are needed," US Army Colonel Gregory Kane, the director of US Joint Task Force Haiti operations, said on Saturday.
This is while Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive had earlier announced that it would take about 10 years to reconstruct the country devastated by the quake.
Read the rest of the article:
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=118037&sectionid=351020706

Aid workers rushing tents to Haitians
8th February 2010
Aid workers in Haiti are rushing to provide tents for the homeless masses.
The coming rainy season is threatening further misery and anger is building among the desperate population over the stumbling relief effort.
While officials said food distribution had finally moved into high gear, more Haitians protested on Sunday, saying the government had done nothing for them as the one-month anniversary of the January 12 devastating earthquake approached.
Meanwhile, the case of 10 Americans charged with kidnapping children in the wake of the disaster took another turn, with their Haitian lawyer saying he had quit after being accused of seeking to bribe the judge.
Read the rest of the article:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/world/6773620/aid-workers-rushing-tents-to-haitians/

Haiti protesters denounce aid corruption, hoarding
7th February 2010
Survivors of Haiti's earthquake protest to demand food in an area known as Petion Ville in Port-au-Prince February 7, 2010.
Credit: Reuters/St Felix Evens

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Hundreds of Haitian earthquake survivors protested in a suburb of the wrecked capital on Sunday, accusing a district mayor of corruption and hoarding food aid provided by relief groups, witnesses said.
The protest in the Petionville neighborhood of Port-au-Prince was one of the largest since the January 12 quake that killed more than 200,000 people and left over 1 million homeless. It reflected still simmering anger among survivors over problems in the massive international relief effort.
Aid agencies from around the world have moved tons of rice and other food into Haiti but distributions to the hungry and homeless have been slow and sometimes chaotic.
Banging on plastic buckets and waving branches and palm fronds, the protesters surged past piles of earthquake rubble -- and a woman bathing by the side of the road -- to the city hall in Petionville, where they accused Mayor Lydie Parent of hoarding aid.
"I am hungry, I am dying of hunger. Lydie Parent keeps the rice and doesn't give us anything. They never go distribute where we live," one protester said.
Read the full report:
http://tinyurl.com/yfm5jzp
 
Haiti reviews urban building plan
5th February 2020
Haitian officials are developing a new urban plan in part to regulate the use of construction materials following the widespread collapse of hundreds of buildings in the recent earthquake.
The plan comes as Haitians are beginning to rebuild after the 7.0-magnitude earthquake on Jan. 12 — but in an unregulated, sometimes haphazard way.
"First of all, we need to change our building code," Gregory Mevs, one of Haiti's leading builders, told CBC News. "We don't have one.
"Second thing [we need to learn is] the experience of this shake."
For decades, Haitians used concrete as their primary building material because of its ability to withstand the heavy winds and flying debris of hurricanes.
But concrete does not hold up well in earthquakes, as was proven so fatally last month.
Heavy concrete roofs flattened hundreds of buildings in the capital of the Caribbean country, Port-au-Prince, where the quake was centred, crushing thousands of people to death. Chunks of broken concrete litter the streets of the city, and excavation crews work tirelessly to clear the rubble.
Read the rest:
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/02/05/haiti-building-code.html

Haiti - Still Starving 23 Days Later
By Bill Quigley
February 06, 2010
You can walk down many of the streets of Port au Prince and see absolutely no evidence that the world community has helped Haiti.
Twenty three days after the earthquake jolted Haiti and killed over 200,000 people, as many as a million people have still not received any international food assistance.
On February 4, the UN World Food Program reported they had given at least some food, mostly 55 pound bags of rice, to over a million people. The UN acknowledges that it still needs to reach another one million people. The 55 pounds of rice are expected to provide a two week food ration for a family. Beans and cooking oil are scheduled to come later.
The Associated Press reported that people in Haiti at small protests were holding up banners reading "Help us, we're starving."
Over a million people are displaced. About 10,000 families are in tents, the rest are living under sheets, blankets and tarps.
Bill Quigley just returned from Haiti. He is Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights. His email is Quigley77@gmail.com
Read the complete article:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24601.htm

AU considers new state in Africa for Haitians made homeless by earthquake   
Saturday 6th February, 2010
The African Union (AU), following a suggestion from President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal, is considering the creation, within Africa, of a new state for the thousands of Haitians left homeless and destitute by the January 12th earthquake.
Wade called also for the nationalization of all Haitian refugees seeking to return to Africa.
He drew on the history of Haiti to emphasize the long-standing links between the island nation and Africa, saying that the homeless Haitians, as descendants of slaves taken from Africa, had the right to return and start a new life on the continent.
Jean Ping, Chairman of the African Union, told African leaders at the organization’s annual summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, that they would consider Wade’s suggestion.
Read the full article:
http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=597960

Bill Clinton lands in Haiti   
Saturday 6th February, 2010
Former U.S. president Bill Clinton flew into Haiti Frioday in his expanded role as United Nations coordinator of international quake relief efforts.
Clinton was already the Special Envoy for Haiti well prior to the January 12 earthquake. He was appointed to that role in May last year.
Clinton said on his arrival he would stay until the end. "Long after the television crews have gone and emergency response teams have returned to their home countries," he said.
"Flying into Port-au-Prince for the second time since the earthquake, I was pleased to see continued signs of an expanding relief effort."
http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=597933

US missionaries charged with child kidnapping in Haiti
Ten American missionaries arrested in Haiti for trying to take 33 children out of the country after last month's earthquake have been charged with child kidnapping and criminal association.
4th February 2010
Ten American missionaries arrested in Haiti for trying to take 33 children out of the country after last month's earthquake were charged today with child kidnapping and criminal association.
The group, most of whom are members of an Idaho-based church group, were sent back to jail today after a closed court hearing in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince.
Their lawyer, Edwin Coq, said that the judge had found sufficient evidence to file charges against his clients, who were arrested last Friday at Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic while trying to take the busload of ­children out of the country without documents or permission.
He said that under Haiti's legal system, there will not be an open trial, but that a judge will consider the evidence. It could take the judge three months to render a verdict, he added.
Each of the kidnapping counts carries a possible sentence of five to 15 years in prison.
One of missionaries, Laura Silsby, told reporters as she entered the court: "We expect God's will be done. And we will be released."
The group, who were being held at the headquarters of Haiti's judicial police, deny they were engaged in child trafficking and said they were just trying to help some of the thousands of orphans left destitute and abandoned by the 12 January earthquake.
They have been described as "kidnappers" by Haiti's prime minister, Jean-Max Bellerive, who said that they "knew what they were doing was wrong".
Read the full report:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/04/missionaries-charged-child-kidnapping-haiti

US Military Nowhere To Be Found In Port-au-Prince
By Dolores M. Bernal, NEWS JUNKIE POST
30th January 2010
You have to be in Haiti to see for yourself that no where in Port-au-Prince are troops present or actively helping survivors.
No Aid In Port-au-Prince.
I have been driving all week around Port-au-Prince taking photos of the destroyed homes and buildings and as I’ve gone from one end of this city to the other, the US is military is only found at the airport — nice and secured behind those gates.
Meanwhile, the UN and its white Jeeps are driving all around this city, but I haven’t seen them stop at any particular location to give food or water. Where is all the aid going, if any?
Michel David Stephan is a 22-year-old Haitian university student who has not been able to continue his studies because the campus has been badly damaged. I asked him what he thought of the UN.
...“I had a little girl who lost two fingers during the earthquake,” said Luis Ramos, a Physician Assistant from Pittsburgh. “A relative brought her in because the girl was complaining of pain in her hand. When I took off the bandage and saw what she had, I put the bandage back on and told her to go to a hospital right away,” Ramos said. “The little girl had gangrene all the way to her wrist. They will have to amputate her arm.”
Read the full report:
http://newsjunkiepost.com/2010/01/30/us-military-no-where-to-be-found-in-port-au-prince/
 
The Vultures Circle Haiti at Every Opportunity, Natural or Man-made
By Regan Boychuk
February 03, 2010 "Information Clearing House"
Haitians’ incredible plight has always been difficult to fully appreciate. Then the earthquake struck: hundreds of thousands dead, hundreds of thousands more hurt, a million homeless, and two million in need of food. It defies imagination.
And according to a journalist just returned from Haiti, even the heart-rending footage we’ve seen here on television fails to “portray the magnitude of the tragedy that has happened – and the degree to which the Haitian people are suffering. When looking at images from the disaster,” writes Steven Edwards, “we need to multiply by ten times our reaction of horror – only doing that can give you a true picture of what is going on in a place that has become hell not far from our shores.”i
Many Canadians, like millions of others the world over, have been moved to make donations to help Haiti recover from this tragedy. Fundraisers have been organized across the country and tens of millions of dollars are pouring in. The mayors of Canada’s 22 biggest cities are organizing to send municipal experts to Haiti to help rebuild roads, bridges, and other infrastructure.ii Such solidarity and support is no doubt welcome, but there are also other, less altruistic efforts afoot.
Read the full article with many linked references:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24582.htm#sdendnote1sym

Haiti debates moving its capital
4th February 2010
Haiti's official seismologist, who predicted the recent earthquake, has warned that an even stronger one is likely to hit Port-au-Prince within the next 20 years. Now the Haitian government is debating how and if the capital should be rebuilt -- or if it should be moved elsewhere.
Claude Prépetit had seen it coming in his figures. He had done the calculations, in millimeters and in centuries, he had calculated the pressure that was building up beneath his feet, and he had estimated the energy that would eventually be discharged. And when the earth finally did shake, and falling concrete ceilings, stone walls and wooden beams killed at least 170,000 people within the space of 40 seconds, that was when Prépetit thought to himself: “This is it -- this has to be a seven.”
He had predicted an earthquake with a magnitude of about 7.2 points on the Richter scale, and the actual quake measured 7.0. For years, he had taken precise measurements and performed careful calculations, and he had done his job exceedingly well.
Read the full article:
http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=213714

Haiti: Protests, frustrations erupt as earthquake aid hits bottlenecks after reaching island
03:05 AM Feb 04, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - The aid flooding into Haiti by plane and boat is not reaching earthquake victims quickly enough because of red tape, security fears, transportation bottlenecks and occasional corruption.
Anger boiled into a protest Wednesday by hundreds of hungry people who jogged down a broad avenue in a Port-au-Prince suburb waving branches and chanting, "They stole the rice! They stole the rice!" Protesters alleged local officials were charging them for donated food.
Many foreign aid workers and Haitians say ample donations are arriving, but express frustration at the slow pace of distribution of food and medicine from Port-au-Prince's port, airport and a warehouse in its sprawling Cite-Soleil slum.
Many Haitians are now complaining that corrupt officials have started to manipulate some of the aid that reaches the streets.
http://www.todayonline.com/BreakingNews/EDC100204-0000023/Haiti--Protests,-frustrations-erupt-as-earthquake-aid-hits-bottlenecks-after-reaching-island

Haiti: Trafficking the children
13:37 GMT, Wednesday, 3 February 2010

Children taken for adoption are now in the care of SOS Children's Villages

The Haitian children at the centre of an illegal adoption row are being looked after by SOS Children's Villages, a Cambridge-based charity. SOS has taken in the 33 children who were being taken to the Dominican Republic by members of an American Christian organisation.
Kathie Neal, from SOS, called the desire to adopt Haiti's earthquake orphans a "knee-jerk reaction".
She added: "We don't have a right to take these children out of Haiti."
While the authorities investigate the alleged illegal transportation of the children and the attempt to take them over the border without appropriate paperwork, the youngsters have been given a new home at an orphanage close to Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince.
The SOS Children's Villages home at Santo was largely unaffected by the earthquake that hit the island on 12 January 2010, and a temporary hospital has been set up in its grounds.
Read the full article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/cambridgeshire/hi/people_and_places/newsid_8493000/8493170.stm

One third of Haiti orphans 'kidnapped' by American church group still have parents
By David Gardner
Last updated at 4:48 PM on 02nd February 2010
At least ten of the 33 children that an American church group tried to smuggle out of Haiti as orphans still have parents, it was revealed today.
One eight-year-old girl told aid workers that she thought her mother had arranged a short holiday for her and sobbed: ‘I am not an orphan. I still have my parents.’
The disturbing development emerged as ten U.S. Baptists were set to appear in court in Port-au-Prince accused of trying to take the children out of the earthquake-ravaged country without any proper documentation.
Read the full article:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1247788/Haiti-earthquake-One-Haiti-orphans-kidnapped-American-church-group-parents.html

US Baptists 'knew taking children out of Haiti was wrong'
Idaho church group accused of kidnap could be sent home for trial
By Paisley Dodds in Port-au-Prince
Tuesday, 2 February 201
Haiti's leader says it's clear to him that the 10 US Baptists who tried to take 33 Haitian children out of the quake-ravaged country "knew what they were doing was wrong".
Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said some of the children have parents who are alive. The government is attempting to locate them. He says a judicial system needs to determine whether the Americans were acting in good faith – as they claim – or are child traffickers.
The Baptists are mostly from Idaho. They have been held since being arrested on Friday trying to enter the Dominican Republic with the children.
Read the full report:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-baptists-knew-taking-children-out-of-haiti-was-wrong-1886357.html

U.S. trial possible for Americans arrested with Haiti kids
2nd February 2010
From staff and wire reports
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Haitian and U.S. officials are considering a trial in the United States for 10 Americans arrested while trying to bus children out of Haiti without proper documents.
"There can be no question of taking our children off the streets and out of the country," Communications Minister Marie-Laurence Jocelin Lassegue said. "They will be judged."
The 10 Americans, who belong to a Baptist church group in Idaho, said they were trying to rescue orphans and children whose parents could not care for them. Spokeswoman Laura Silsby said relatives of the children and the head of an orphanage asked the group to take the children to a well-supplied former beach hotel in the Dominican Republic.
Read the full report:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2010-02-02-haitiorphans_N.htm

Haiti PM: US Baptists Knew Removing Kids Was Wrong
The New York Times 2010-02-02
Filed at 12:15 a.m. ET PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) --
Haiti's prime minister said Monday that 10 Americans who tried to take a busload of undocumented Haitian children out of the country knew that ''what they were doing was wrong,'' and could be prosecuted in the United States. Prime Minister Max Bellerive told The Associated Press that his country is open to having the Americans face U.S. justice, since most government buildings -- including Haiti's courts -- were crippled by the monster earthquake. ''It is clear now that they were trying to cross the border without papers. It is clear now...
http://article.wn.com/view/2010/02/02/Haiti_PM_US_Baptists_Knew_Removing_Kids_Was_Wrong_1/

Haiti may force Baptists back to U.S.
Group accused of smuggling orphans out of devastated country
1st February 2010
Officials in Haiti say they are talking with U.S. diplomats about whether 10 American Baptists arrested trying to take children out of the country should be sent to the United States for prosecution.
A lawyer representing the Americans said that nine of the 10 are being treated poorly while the 10th, a diabetic, was hospitalized after fainting.
Haiti's communications minister said the Americans might have to face justice in the United States because Haiti's court system has been crippled, and courthouses destroyed, by the Jan. 12 earthquake.
Dominican Republic lawyer Jorge Puello said the Americans are crammed in a small room at Haiti's judicial police headquarters. He claims they have not been given adequate medical care or food.
The children involved with the Baptist group were aged two months to 12 years old. They were taken to an orphanage run by Austrian-based SOS Children's Villages, where spokesman George Willeit said they arrived "very hungry, very thirsty."
...A two- to three-month old baby was dehydrated and had to be hospitalized, he said. An orphanage worker held and caressed another, older baby, who was feverish and looked disoriented.
"One girl was crying, and saying, 'I am not an orphan. I still have my parents.' And she thought she was going on a summer camp or a boarding school or something like that," Willeit said.
Willeit also said some of the children are not orphans but have living parents, who were reportedly told that the children were going on an extended holiday from the post-quake misery.
Read the full report:
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/02/01/haiti-orphans-baptists-100201.html

Rebuilding begins in Haiti

Uploaded to YouTube 31st January 2010
Hundreds of thousands of Haitians made homeless by January's earthquake are still waiting for temporary shelters. Only a few thousand tents have been distributed so far, according to the International Organisation for Migration. But some Haitians, tired of waiting, are taking matters into their own hands.
Al Jazeera's Gabriel Elizondo reports on one man, Francoise Antoine, who has decided to begin work on replacing his destroyed home.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrxujQUwQlo

Americans detained in Haiti were 'trying to rescue children' Ten Baptist workers to appear in Port-au-Prince court after attempting to take youngsters out of country
By Tom Phillips in Port-au-Prince
1st February 2010
Haitian children wait in a police car after a group of Americans was stopped trying to take them out of the country. Photograph: Reuters.

Ten Americans will appear in court today in Port-au-Prince after attempting to take 34 children out of Haiti, saying that they were trying to rescue them.
The Baptist aid workers, from the Idaho-based New Life Children's Refuge, were arrested on Friday as they attempted to leave the country for the Dominican Republic, about 45 miles from Port-au-Prince by road. They were reportedly taking the children, aged between three months and 12 years, to a safe house in the Dominican city of Cabarete.
Yesterday, the children were being cared for by the Austrian-based charity SOS Children's Villages. It said most of the children were in "a very bad emotional state … Some of the children mentioned that they have parents. According to a 12-year-old girl, she and her family had been told she was going to a boarding school in the Dominican Republic."
The charity said a piece of paper with information about New Life promised: "We have a beautiful place for them to live with a soccer field, swimming pool and short walk to the ocean. We have authorisation from the government to bring orphanages children, babies up to 10 years old in the DR. Haitian friends or relatives can come to DR and visit the children and get updates through our website."
A spokeswoman for New Life, Laura Silsby, told Associated Press: "In this chaos the government is in right now we were just trying to do the right thing." She said the group planned to take 100 children by bus to a 45-room hotel at Cabarete that was being converted into an orphanage.
The arrests came amid fears that child traffickers could be taking advantage of the mayhem in Port-au-Prince to snatch children from hospitals or refugee camps. Aid workers believe the quake may have created thousands of new orphans who are easy targets for criminal gangs. Unicef's senior child protection adviser in Haiti, Bo Viktor Nylund, said: "We have heard reports that there has been trafficking through the border and flights leaving the country but we have not been able to verify this."
Read the complete article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/31/haiti-americans-detained-children

The west owes Haiti a bailout. And it would be a hand-back, not a handout.
The Caribbean nation should be reimbursed for centuries of punitive treatment and brutality by the outside world.
By Gary Younge
31st January 2010
Last week started with a conference in Montreal, called by a group of governments and international agencies calling themselves Friends of Haiti, to discuss the long and short term needs of the recently devastated Caribbean nation. Even as corpses remained under the earthquake's rubble and the government operated out of a police station, the assembled "friends" would not commit to cancelling Haiti's $1bn debt. Instead they agreed to a 10-year plan with no details, and a commitment to meet again – when the bodies have been buried along with coverage of the country – sometime in the future.
A few days later in Washington, Timothy Geithner, the US treasury secretary, came before the house oversight committee to explain why he paid top dollar for $85bn worth of toxic assets when he bailed out the insurance company AIG. Geithner said he was faced with a "tragic choice". "The moral, fair and just choice is to protect the innocent," he said.
There is no connection between these two events. But in the public imagination maybe there should be. The world cannot yet find $1bn in debt relief for Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, a country that spent more in 2008 servicing its debt than it did on health, education and the environment combined and that has now been flattened. But, over a weekend, a single country could rustle up $85bn to keep a single company in business. It is an obscene reminder that, in the world of global capital, distressed assets are still more valued than distressed people.
The recent earthquake was an act of nature. But the magnitude of the devastation, the consequent human toll and the inability of the country to recover unaided are the product of its political and economic marginalisation. Haiti was not so much a disaster waiting to happen as a disaster that kept happening, but that too few cared about. Haiti needs a bailout. And if it does not get one the disasters will never end.
...The west owes Haiti. And yet still it keeps trying to extort more from the misery. The living had not yet been pulled from the debris when the vultures started circling. A day after the earthquake The Street, an investment website, published "An opportunity to heal Haiti", claiming: "Here are some companies that could potentially benefit: General Electric, Caterpillar, Deere, Fluor, Jacobs Engineering."
...When they believe something to be a priority, western governments can forgive bad loans, pump out money and ease restrictions on credit. They have done it to save the wealthy from themselves; now they must do it to save the poor from the wealthy.
Read the complete article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/jan/31/west-haiti-bailout-reimbursed-brutality

“There is a multinational conspiracy to illegally take the mineral resources of the Haitian people.” Haiti’s minerals include gold, the valuable strategic metal iridium and oil, apparently lots of it!:
The Fateful Geological Prize Called Haiti
by F. William Engdahl
30th January 2010
Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, Bolivian, French and Swiss rescue organizations accuse the US military of refusing landing rights to planes bearing necessary medicines and urgently needed potable water to the millions of Haitians stricken, injured and homeless.
Behind the smoke, rubble and unending drama of human tragedy in the hapless Caribbean country, a drama is in full play for control of what geophysicists believe may be one of the world’s richest zones for hydrocarbons-oil and gas outside the Middle East, possibly orders of magnitude greater than that of nearby Venezuela.
Haiti, and the larger island of Hispaniola of which it is a part, has the geological fate that it straddles one of the world’s most active geological zones, where the deepwater plates of three huge structures relentlessly rub against one another—the intersection of the North American, South American and Caribbean tectonic plates. Below the ocean and the waters of the Caribbean, these plates consist of an oceanic crust some 3 to 6 miles thick, floating atop an adjacent mantle. Haiti also lies at the edge of the region known as the Bermuda Triangle, a vast area in the Caribbean subject to bizarre and unexplained disturbances.
Read the full report:
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17287

Haiti earthquake: orphans for sale for $50
By Nick Allen in Haiti
Haitian orphans at the UN compound in Port-au-Prince. Photo: Wolfgang Rattay/REUTERS

January 29, 2010
Orphans in Haiti are being offered for sale to foreigners for as little as £30 amid warnings that up to one million children in the country have been left vulnerable to abuse and trafficking in the wake of the earthquake.
In a remote area north of Port-au-Prince, a man was reported to have offered to sell a young boy to a Canadian man for just $50.
The first confirmed case of a child being offered for sale since Haiti was devastated by a 7.0-magnitude earthquake on Jan 12 took place near Gonaives, 150km north of Port-au-Prince.
It was reported by Noel Ismonin, a Canadian pastor who rescues orphans in the area. A man offered to sell him the boy but the pastor refused.
Meanwhile, in camps around the capital there were several reports of men being lynched after being accused by earthquake victims of trying to steal infants from tents.
The incident near Gonaives raised fears that child trafficking gangs could move into desperately poor rural areas that have yet to be properly reached by aid agencies. The gangs are also be less likely to be picked up by authorities there.
Read the full report:
http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=m62741&hd=&size=1&l=e

Stop treating these people like savages. Haitians have faced their tragedy with dignity and stoicism – not that you would know it from the way the disaster has been reported
Andy Kershaw

January 29, 2010

Just a couple of hours before the earthquake hammered poor Haiti, I was reorganising my bookshelves at home. In the Haiti section I came across a lovely old volume I'd bought from a wandering bookseller in Port-au-Prince on one of my many visits to the former "Pearl of the Antilles", once – incredibly – the richest colony in the world.
The book, Haiti Cherie, published in 1953, was clearly intended for the souvenir stalls – in the days when Haiti had tourists. The full-page photos show a Haiti, and particularly the architectural splendours of Port-au-Prince, during what was known as la belle époque, that period between the Second World War and the arrival, in 1957, of the crazed Duvalier father-and-son dynastical dictatorship in the now-crumpled presidential palace (which was designed and built by British architects and engineers).
Even before the earthquake, and without the photographic evidence in the book, it was scarcely credible that the already broken country and the shattered streets of Port-au-Prince were once elegant and glamorous. But until the dark night of Duvalierism came down, the Haitian capital was a rival to Havana as the chi-chi tropical retreat of Hollywood stars and the literati. Noël Coward was a regular at the Hotel Oloffson, which, a decade later, would be the setting for Graham Greene's The Comedians, his mid-1960s not-so-fictional novel that blew the whistle internationally on Duvalier's terror.
Read the full article:
http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=m62726&hd=&size=1&l=e

Haiti Earthquake Aftermath - Orphan, Organ Trafficking

27th January 2010
Trafficking of children and human organs is occurring in the aftermath of the earthquake that devastated parts of Haiti, killed more than 150,000 people, and left many children orphans, Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said Wednesday.
"There is organ trafficking for children and other persons also, because they need all types of organs," Bellerive said in an exclusive interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUv6WVS0aoo

Haiti PM slams US aid delays

29th January 2010
Jean-Max Bellerive, the Haitian prime minister, has told Al Jazeera that he does not understand why so much water and food in storage facilities at the airport is not being distributed.
In an exclusive interview on Wednesday, Bellerive expressed his frustration with security decisions made by the US military that are hindering the earthquake relief effort.
"Haitians don't care about the security, they just want the water, food and medicine to get to them ... they don't feel that there is the need for so much security," he said.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zaFz8cQ2ko

RAINY SEASON is COMING SOON FOR  HOMELESS in HAITI.
Impermeable Tent Fabric is needed. They have the poles/ wood of all kinds from rubble.
Received 30th January 2010:
Haiti is about to be deluged by its annual rainy season. NORTHERN HEMISPHERE WEALTHY Brits/ Americans who are also progressive activists might google the online addies of manufacturers of impermeable tenting fabric getting same to donate a thousand yards each for construction of TENTS or TEPEES IN HAITI, send a few Navajo to teach the art of making a TEPEE. http://www.luckinlove.com/tent.htm It's a race to create housing before the APRIL RAINY season starts, when pneumonia and sewage leaking dysentery diseases will start...so it's the THOUSAND METER RACE to create housing.

The RAINY season is coming to HAITI, and millions of people will be sitting out in that rain! IT would be so great if we who have homes, roofs, kitchens could send them waterproof fabric. The idea is that each one of your family and friends might possibly research who makes this impermeable tent fabric ..online. Then, we talk 2pastors, give potluck parties, concerts, church bazaar fund raisers, make lots of noise in local papers to raise the money that the manufacturer requires to ship l000 meters of their impermeable fabric to Haiti. AT WHOLESALE PRICE, not RETAIL. If each of us sends this email to our lists of chums, the THOUSAND METER RACE would get going before the RAIN STARTS POURING DOWN!  This is a no hard work thing. We let our fingers do the walking at Google, find out what they want, basic per yard cost, raise the money to pay them finding donors. Like I must know ten clients with enuf moola to make a hefty pie slice donation. You might know same, so some of our send-outs are to THEM to let'em know what we're thinking. Some primary research is necessary and sharing the data with this whole national network of THOUSAND METER RACE email chums so make a list in your browser so the message travels backwards to all who U reached. Each of us can send NEWS/HITS out to our lists, all have the results of each other's findings on tent fabric manufacturers. PS I'm betting the manufacturers gift the yardage for the good P.R.
Read the rest:
http://www.luckinlove.com/tent.htm

The kidnapping of Haiti
By John Pilger
28 Jan 2010
In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes the "swift and crude" appropriation of earthquake-ravaged Haiti by the militarised Obama administration. With George W. Bush attending to the "relief effort" and Bill Clinton the UN's man, The Comedians, Graham Greene's dark novel about exploted Haiti comes to mind.
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 an American 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 an American military base and relief flights have been re-routed to the Dominican Republic. All flights stopped for three hours for the arrival of Hillary Clinton. Critically injured Haitians waited unaided as 800 American residents in Haiti were fed, watered and evacuated. Six days passed before the US Air Force dropped bottled water to people suffering thirst and dehydration.
The first TV reports played a critical role, giving the impression of widespread criminal mayhem. Matt Frei, the BBC reporter dispatched from Washington, seemed on the point of hyperventilation as he brayed about the “violence” and need for “security”. In spite of the demonstrable dignity of the earthquake victims, and evidence of citizens’ groups toiling unaided to rescue people, and even an American general’s assessment that the violence in Haiti was considerably less than before the earthquake, Frei claimed that “looting is the only industry” and “the dignity of Haiti’s past is long forgotten.” Thus, a history of unerring US violence and exploitation in Haiti was consigned to the victims. “There’s no doubt,” reported Frei in the aftermath of America’s bloody invasion of Iraq in 2003, “that the desire to bring good, to bring American values to the rest of the world, and especially now to the Middle East... is now increasingly tied up with military power.”
Read the full article:
http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=564

Giving Life in a Land Overflowing With Pain
By Damien Cave
29th January 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Biology and the earthquake dictated that Roseline Antoine would give birth at 9:42 a.m. Thursday to a healthy baby girl who has no home but the street. The same irrevocable forces left Delva Venite naked a few feet away, in pain, waiting nearly a day for doctors to deal with the stillborn son inside her.
The women shared one of the better medical facilities here — a maternity tent outside General Hospital — but there were not enough beds or doctors. Flies were their roommates, bunching like crows on the intravenous drips, and as for the joy found in most maternity wards, that had been lost to the cracked earth.
“The street where I live, it’s so dirty; there isn’t enough food or water,” Ms. Antoine said. “I’m scared to bring a baby into this awful situation.”
Pulling down her blue dress after giving birth, she added, “I need to find a way to survive.”
Read the full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/30/world/americas/30birth.html

U.S. Humanitarian Aid Relief - We'll Help, You Pay!:
Cost Dispute Halts Airlift of Injured Haiti Quake Victims
29th January 2010
MIAMI — The United States has suspended its medical evacuations of critically injured Haitian earthquake victims until a dispute over who will pay for their care is settled, military officials said Friday.
The military flights, usually C-130s carrying Haitians with spinal cord injuries, burns and other serious wounds, ended on Wednesday after Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida formally asked the federal government to shoulder some of the cost of the care.
Hospitals in Florida have treated more than 500 earthquake victims so far, the military said, including an infant who was pulled out of the rubble with a fractured skull and ribs. Other states have taken patients, too, and those flights have been suspended as well, the officials said.
The suspension could be catastrophic for patients, said Dr. Barth A. Green, the co-founder of Project Medishare for Haiti, a nonprofit group affiliated with the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine that had been evacuating about two dozen patients a day.
Read the full report:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/30/us/30airlift.html

Basic medicines running [out] in Haiti
By Ben Fox, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
29th January 2010, 8:12am
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Doctors and aid workers say treating the tens of thousands of Haitians injured by the earthquake is taxing the country’s devastated hospitals — as well as the efforts of physicians from around the world who are providing emergency care.
Basic medical supplies such as antibiotics and painkillers are running dangerously low at some hospitals and clinics in Port-au-Prince, the capital, and in the countryside, alarming doctors who are struggling to keep up with demand.
The shortages complicate the effort to treat 200,000 people in need of post-surgery care “and an unaccounted number of people ... with untreated injuries,” Elisabeth Byrs, of the U.N.’s humanitarian co-ordination office said Friday in Geneva.
Dr. Nancy Fleurancois, volunteering at the damaged hospital in the Haitian coastal town of Jacmel, told a visiting U.N. official Thursday that her team is treating 500 people a day — many for the first time since the Jan. 12 quake — and desperately needs antibiotics and surgical supplies.
“You see people come here and they are at death’s door,” said Fleurancois, a Haitian-American from Newark, Delaware. “More help is needed.”
Read the rest of the article:
http://www.edmontonsun.com/news/haiti/2010/01/29/12662736.html

Ottawa pastor rescues orphan from being sold 'We don't buy children," Pastor Noel Ismorin says after incident in Haitian quake zone.
By KENNETH JACKSON, Ottawa Sun
28th January 2010
An Ottawa pastor rescued a Haitian orphan from being sold for $50 on Wednesday.
Pastor Noel Ismorin runs a children’s orphanage and school in Gonaives, outside the capital of Port-au-Prince, and was approached by a man trying sell Noel a young boy for $50.
Noel refused to pay and ended up rescuing the boy from the man. But, he downplayed his actions when reached by the Ottawa Sun by phone. He refused to directly talk about the incident, which was first reported by the Daily Telegraph in England.
“That exists in every country in the world,” he told the Sun of child trafficking. “I see how these things happen ... We don’t buy children.”
There are reports of up to one million children in the hard-hit country left without parents or guardians first by a massive hurricane two years ago and now by the Jan. 12 earthquake.
An Ottawa-based international aid company working in Haiti hasn’t heard of people selling children but has seen them given away for nothing.
Read the full report:
http://www.edmontonsun.com/news/haiti/2010/01/28/12650711.html

Many children alone in quake's aftermath
By Ben Fox and Vivian Sequera,
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
27th January 2010, 9:16am
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The smallest survivors of Haiti’s catastrophic earthquake are growing into one of the biggest problems in its aftermath.
Many of the countless thousands of children scattered among Port-au-Prince’s makeshift camps of homeless have nobody to care for them, aid workers say, leaving them without protection against disease, child predators and other risks.
“They are extremely vulnerable,” said Kate Conradt, a spokeswoman for the aid group Save the Children.
She said U.N. experts estimate there may be 1 million youngsters who lost at least one parent in the Jan. 12 quake or are separated from their families.
Some young Haitians are even being released from hospitals with no one to care for them — there just aren’t enough beds for them.
“Health workers are being advised to monitor and send separated/unaccompanied children to child-friendly spaces,” the U.N. humanitarian office said in its latest situation report.
The U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF, along with Save the Children and the Red Cross, has begun registering at-risk children and has identified three interim care centres at orphanages where they can be temporarily sheltered, said Bo Viktor Nylund, a senior UNICEF adviser for child protection.
The Connecticut-based Save the Children, meanwhile, has set up “Child Spaces” in 13 makeshift settlements. And the three agencies are working to reunite families, by creating a joint database of separated family members.
Read the rest of the article:
http://www.edmontonsun.com/news/haiti/2010/01/27/12632071.html

Five days after Haiti's government ended search and rescue on 22nd January this 17-year-old girl was pulled out alive. If the rescuers had listened to the inept government she would have perished with all the rest!

Rescuers hauled a girl alive from the ruins of Haiti's capital on 27 January, 15 days after the earthquake. Severely dehydrated and so weak she could barely talk, 17-year-old Darlene Etienne managed a whispered 'thank you' to her rescuers... Picture: AP

Haiti government ends quake search and rescue phase: UN
22nd January 2010
Haiti’s government has ended the search and rescue phase of the quake relief effort after at least 132 people were pulled out alive from under the rubble, the United Nations said on Saturday.
"The government has declared the search and rescue phase over,’’ the UN’s Organisation for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in its latest situation report on the relief effort.
"There were 132 lives rescued by international search and rescue teams,’’ it added.
An 84-year-old woman and 22-year-old man were pulled out of the rubble in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, on Friday, 10 days after the magnitude 7.0 quake.
Read the full article:
http://www.smh.com.au/world/haiti-government-ends-quake-search-and-rescue-phase-un-20100123-mr57.html

20 January: Elisabeth Joassaint, a 23-day-old baby, was rescued from the ruins of a house in the devastated town of Jacmel in southern Haiti after spending seven days trapped with nothing to eat or drink. Picture: EYEVINE

West urged to write off Haiti's $1bn debt
Western governments have been urged to write off Haiti's international debts of nearly $1 billion (£620 million) after its prime minister said rebuilding the country could take a decade.
25th January 2010
Jean-Max Bellerive told an emergency meeting of ministers in Montreal, including US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, that the "colossal" effort would take "at least five to 10 years".
He said: "The people of Haiti will need more and more and more in order to complete the reconstruction. What we're looking for is a long-term commitment. Haiti needs the massive support of its partners in the international community in the medium and long term."
Read the full report:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/haiti/7074099/West-urged-to-write-off-Haitis-1bn-debt.html

In Comparison to the U.S. Government's Voracious Disaster Relief Greed & Exploitation Venezuela Writes Off Haitian Oil Debt:

Chavez writes off Haiti's oil debt to Venezuela
Irish Sun
Tuesday 26th January, 2010
Caracas, Jan 26 (IANS/EFE) President Hugo Chavez has announced that he will write off the undisclosed sum Haiti owes Venezuela for oil as part of a regional 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.
Read the rest of the article:
http://story.irishsun.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/2411cd3571b4f088/id/593414/cs/1

Haiti Gets a Penny of Each U.S. Aid Dollar
By The Associated Press
January 27, 2010 -- AP-- Only 1 cent of each dollar the U.S. is spending on earthquake relief in Haiti is going in the form of cash to the Haitian government, according to an Associated Press review of relief efforts.
Less than two weeks after President Obama announced an initial $100 million for Haiti earthquake relief, U.S. government spending on the disaster has tripled to $317 million at latest count. That's just over $1 each from everyone in the United States.
Relief experts say it would be a mistake to send too much direct cash to the Haitian government, which is in disarray and has a history of failure and corruption.

Read the full report:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24518.htm

An email message from an English rescuer returning from Haiti:
The Real Deal: From A Friend Who Went to HAITI.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Subject: From A Friend Who Went to HAITI.
For what ever it's worth, I received this dispatch from one who went to Haiti to help. - Jim Humphrey
From a friend that just got back from Haiti
To All;
I just returned from Haiti with Hebler. We flew in at 3 AM Sunday to the Scene of such incredible destruction on one side, and enormous ineptitude and criminal neglect on the other.
Port of Prince is in ruins. The rest of the country is fairly intact. Our Team was a rescue team and we carried special equipment that locates people buried under the rubble. There are easily 200,000 dead, the city smells like a charnel house. The bloody UN was there for 5 years doing apparently nothing but wasting US taxpayers money. The ones I ran into were either incompetent or outright anti American. Most are French or French speakers, worthless every damn one of them. While 1800 rescuers were ready willing and able to leave the airport and go do our jobs, the UN and USAID, (another organization full of little OBamites and Communists that openly speak against America), these two organizations exemplared their parochialism by:
USAID, when in control of all inbound flights, had food and water flights stacked up all the way to Miami, yet allowed Geraldo Rivera, Anderson Cooper and a host of other left wing news puppies to land.
Pulled all the security off the rescue teams so that Bill Clinton and his wife could have the grand tour, whilst we sat unable to get to people trapped in the rubble.
Stacked enough food and water for the relief over at the side of the airfield then put a guard on it while we dehydrated and wouldn't release a drop of it to the rescuers.
No shower facilities to decontaminate after digging or moving corpses all day, except for the FEMA teams who brought their own shower and Decon equipment, as well as air conditioned tents.
No latrine facilities, less digging a hole if you set up a shitter everyone was trying to use it.
I watched a 25 year old Obamite with the USAID shrieking hysterically, Berate a full bird colonel in the air force, because he countermanded her orders, whilst trying to unscrew the air pattern. "You don't know what your president wants! The military isn't in charge here we are!"
If any of you are thinking of giving money to the Haitian relief, or to the UN don't waste your money. It will only go to further the goals of the French and the Liberal left.
If we are a fair and even society, why is it that only white couples are adopting Haitian orphans. Where the hell is that vocal minority that is always screaming about the injustice of American society.
Bad place, bad situation, but a perfect look at the new world order in action. New Orleans magnified a thousand times. Haiti doesn't need democracy, what Haiti needs is Papa Doc. That's not just my opinion , That is what virtually every Haitian we talked with said. The French run the UN, treat us the same as when we were a colony, at least Papa Doc ran the country.
Oh, and as a last slap in the face the last four of us had to take US AIRWAYs home from Phoenix. They slapped me with a 590 dollar baggage charge for the four of us. The girl at the counter was almost in tears because she couldn't give us a discount or she would lose her job. Pass that on to the flying public.
Nick.

The Three COBs* Conspire to Carve Up Haiti's Natural Resources of Oil, Gold, Uranium and Iridium for the Sole Benefit of American Interests - Business as Usual! * COB = Clinton, Obama, Bush.
  

Search & Rescue Should Never Stop; there is always the possibility of survivors - even after three weeks!

Haiti: girl pulled alive from rubble after 15 days
A teenage girl has been pulled from the rubble of a collapsed Port-au-Prince school, a remarkable 15 days after an earthquake devastated the Haitian capital.
28th January 2010
Darlene Etienne is rescued from the rubble Photo: Ramon Espinosa/AP .
 

French rescuers who found Darlene Etienne, 17, said it was a miracle that she had survived for more than two weeks trapped in the debris.
Miss Etienne's family said she had been studying at the College of St Gerard when the powerful earthquake struck on Jan 12.
"We thought she was dead," Jocelyn A. St. Jules, her cousin, said.
Her discovery comes five days after the Haitian government officially announced the end of search and rescue operations. "I don't know how she happened to resist that long. It's a miracle," said rescue worker J.P. Malaganne.
Rescuers said she was shocked and dehydrated but happy to be free.
"She just said 'thank you,' she's very weak, which suggests that she's been there for 15 days," Commander Samuel Bernes of the rescue team said. "She was in a pocket surrounded by concrete."
Read the full article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/haiti/7088080/Haiti-girl-pulled-alive-from-rubble-after-15-days.html
Also:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8484317.stm

John Travolta flies supplies into Haiti on private plane
Published: 9:38AM GMT 27 Jan 2010
Hollywood star John Travolta has flown his plane to Haiti carrying supplies for victims of the earthquake which struck the island 12 days ago.
Video:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvideo/7077906/John-Travolta-flies-supplies-into-Haiti-on-private-plane.html
Also:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/haiti/7080019/John-Travolta-flies-plane-with-scientologists-to-deliver-aid-to-Haiti.html

Haiti earthquake - starving survivors reduced to eating grass
The eyes of the world are on Haiti but at the epicentre of the earthquake that shattered her country, Anite Bertrand wonders why they cannot seem to see her.
23rd January 2010
Anite Bertrand and her son Milky (pictured) who have so little food they have to survive on tree leaves at a ramshackle camp. Photo: Michael Dominic

Nearly two weeks after the devastation was unleashed, she has received no aid, her home is an open patch of grass under a tree, and her only food the leaves that fall from branches overhead.
"We have nothing so we pick up the leaves, boil them in water from the river and eat them," she says. "No-one has come to help us and we cannot live like this. It is not possible to live on leaves."
Read the full article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/haiti/7063340/Haiti-earthquake---starving-survivors-reduced-to-eating-grass.html

The U.S. Vultures and Thugs Target Vulnerable Haiti:
US Security Company Offers to Perform "High Threat Terminations" and to Confront "Worker Unrest" in Haiti
Here we go: New Orleans 2.0
By Jeremy Scahill
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. I even encountered Israeli mercenaries operating an armed check-point outside of an elite gated community in New Orleans. They worked for a company called Instinctive Shooting International. (That is not a joke).
Now, it is kicking into full gear in Haiti. As we know, the member companies of the Orwellian-named mercenary trade association, the International Peace Operations Association, are offering their services in Haiti. But look for more stories like this one:
Read the full article:
http://rebelreports.com/post/341673601/us-security-company-offers-to-perform-high-threat
Also:
http://redicecreations.com/article.php?id=9627

Scahill: Contractors trying to cash in on Haiti disaster

Uploaded 21st January 2010
Jeremy Scahill, author, Blackwater, the Rise of the Worlds most powerful mercenary army, talks with Rachel Maddow about the opportunistic military contractors hoping to cash in on the tragedy in Haiti.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FekHN3MC338

Obama's 'Arrangement' for the Bush/Clinton Together, Ostensibly to Oversee Haiti's Aid Relief, but in Reality Arranging for U.S. Multinationals to Exploit Haiti's Natural Resources of Oil, Gold and Iridium for American Financial Benefit! Nothing More, Nothing Less!:

Haiti Has Larger Oil Reserves Than Venezuela Say Scientists (An Olympic Pool Compared to a Glass of Water)
January 16, 2010
I have heard rumors that Haiti has vast oil reserves -- and that the globalists want these reserves. However, the globalists cannot get the reserves, because the oil belongs to the Haitian people. So the globalists do not allow the Haitians to exploit the oil reserves, because it would allow the Haitian people to prosper. It would allow the Haitians to build proper infrastructure, so that 7.0 earthquakes do not have such a devastating effect.
Read the full article:
http://remixxworld.blogspot.com/2010/01/haiti-has-larger-oil-reserves-than.html

WHO PLANS TO GIVE HAITIANS CONTROVERSIAL JABS
26th January 2010
The million people in Haiti made homeless by an earthquake that hit the island two weeks ago could be among the first to receive controversial vaccinations under a campaign organised by WHO.
 According to a document published by WHO called „Public health risk assessment and interventions: Earthquake: Haiti“, the UN health agency is strongly recommending that people in Haiti receive vaccinations against tetanus, measles, diphtheria, polio and pertussis in spite of the controversy surrounding these vaccines.
Jagoda Savic this week filed charges at a state prosecutor's offic in Bosnia Herzegovina against WHO presenting evidence that WHO had helped conceal the damage caused by a CSL vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis distributed for free by UNICEF.
Savic presented evidence that 117 children suffered severe side effects.
Read the rest of the article:
http://www.theflucase.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2635%3Awho-plans-to-give-haitians-controversial-jabs&catid=41%3Ahighlighted-news&Itemid=105&lang=en

The US Navy has anchored one of its secret prisons in Haitian waters
25th January 2010
While the deployment of 10,000 US troops in Haiti has been qualified by a number of Latin American political leaders as an invasion and occupation under the guise of a humanitarian relief operation, the arrival of the USS Bataan in Haiti raises even more questions. The US Navy has anchored one of its secret prisons in Haitian waters Over recent years, this amphibious assault ship has been converted into a floating secret prison, forming part of the CIA network of "black sites" used for so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques". The ship’s flat hold bottom, designed to accommodate troops for disembarkment, has been equipped with cages. Prisoners are subjected to the same experiments as in Guantánamo.[1]
Having denied it for a long time, the Pentagon eventually acknowledged that the USS Bataan had in fact been used as a prison in December 2001, but that it recovered its normal functions as of January 2002, an allegation which is contested by numerous specialists who claim that it continued to operate as a prison off shore.
It appears highly unlikely that the prisoners were taken to another location after the earthquake and that the ship was overhauled to allow for the transportation of troops.
http://www.islamtimes.org/vdcbs5b8.rhb9fpe4ur.html

Castro - We Send Doctors, Not Soldiers
Statement by Fidel Castro
25th January 2010
Extract:
In the midst of the Haitian tragedy, without anybody knowing how and why, thousands of US marines, 82nd Airborne Division troops and other military forces have occupied Haiti.  Worse still is the fact that neither the United Nations Organization nor the US government have offered an explanation to the world's public opinion about this relocation of troops.
Several governments have complained that their aircraft have not been allowed to land in order to deliver the human and technical resources that have been sent to Haiti.
Some countries, for their part, have announced they would be sending an additional number of troops and military equipment.  In my view, such events will complicate and create chaos in international cooperation, which is already in itself complex.  It is necessary to seriously discuss this issue.  The UN should be entrusted with the leading role it deserves in these so delicate matters.
Our country is accomplishing a strictly humanitarian mission.  To the extent of its possibilities, it will contribute the human and material resources at its disposal.  The will of our people, who takes pride in   its medical doctors and cooperation workers who provide vital services, is huge, and will rise to the occasion.
Read the full article:
http://www.rense.com/general89/doctr.htm

Haiti earthquake - starving survivors reduced to eating grass
By Nick Allen in Leogane
The eyes of the world are on Haiti but at the epicentre of the earthquake that shattered her country, Anite Bertrand wonders why they cannot seem to see her.
January 24, 2010
Nearly two weeks after the devastation was unleashed, she has received no aid, her home is an open patch of grass under a tree, and her only food the leaves that fall from branches overhead.
"We have nothing so we pick up the leaves, boil them in water from the river and eat them," she says. "No-one has come to help us and we cannot live like this. It is not possible to live on leaves."
Read the full report:
http://uruknet.info/index.php?p=m62525&hd=&size=1&l=e 

Aid piling up at UN's 'cold beer' compound as red tape keeps aid from desperate Haitians - while UN staff have wi-fi and a bar
By Caroline Graham
24th January 2010

Supplies sit at the airport, with authorities unable to send it out to people who need it.

It is a tale of two cities. One has ice-cold beers, internet access, thousands of men and billions of dollars’ worth of  gleaming machinery, together with piles of food, blankets, generators and other aid relief from around the globe.
This is the heavily fortified US-controlled Port-au-Prince airport and neighbouring United Nations compound.
The other is the devastated city of Port-au-Prince, where the stench of death fills the air and starving people are in utter despair, still in need of the basic necessities of food, water, shelter and medical care.
Never, in more than 20 years of covering disasters, has the void between the might and power of the Westernised world and the penniless and pitiful people they have been mobilised to ‘save’ been so glaringly obvious to me.
This nearly two weeks after the earthquake that devastated Haiti’s capital, leaving an estimated 100,000 dead in the rubble and another 1.4million homeless.
Despite a vast worldwide aid effort – spurred on by pleas from celebrities such as George Clooney in Friday night’s Haiti Telethon – the lack of help reaching those who need it is such that even aid agencies on the ground are now admitting they have fallen woefully short.
Alejandro Chicheri, Press officer for the UN-funded World Food Programme, said: ‘Of course we would like to be doing more to help the people on the streets but the logistics are a nightmare.
'These things take time and we are going as fast as we can.’
As I landed at Port-au-Prince airport on Friday on a charter flight funded by the charity World Vision from the neighbouring Dominican Republic, the tragedy was visible even before our jet touched down.
Vast swathes of the city are flattened and huge areas of makeshift ‘tent towns’ are visible from the air, along with long lines of people wandering aimlessly along the roads and gathering outside Western-controlled compounds like the UN’s in desperate hope of handouts.
Read the full report:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1245620/Aid-piling-UNs-cold-beer-compound-red-tape-keeps-aid-desperate-Haitians--UN-staff-wi-fi-bar.html?ITO=1490

Haiti earthquake: Italian disaster expert attacks US response
Guido Bertolaso, Italy's top disaster expert, has attack the US response to the Haiti earthquake, criticising its lack of organisation and the reliance on soldiers with no training in humanitarian operations.
25th January 2010
Mr Bertolaso, head of Italy's civil protection service who received international acclaim for his handling of an L'Aquila earthquake last April, described the response as "a pathetic situation which could have been much better organised".
Mr Bertolaso, who arrived in Haiti on Friday, told Italy's RAI state television that Washington had made "a show of force", but military officers co-ordinating the emergency had no links with the humanitarian groups in the Caribbean island state.
Read the full article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/haiti/7070795/Haiti-earthquake-Italian-disaster-expert-attacks-US-response.html

Haiti earthquake death toll rises to 150,000 and could double
Government minister says confirmed death toll has topped 150,000 in capital alone
By Rory Carroll in Port-au-Prince
Sunday 24 January 2010 23.12 GMT
A Haitian child eats a free meal received from a local restaurant in Port-au-Prince. Photograph: Eliana Aponte/Reuters



Haiti's government raised the confirmed earthquake death toll to 150,000 ­today, and said the figure could double as reports from outside the capital are collated.
Aid agencies said food, water and basic supplies were reaching more people but that clinics were also starting to see more infections and complications from amateur medical treatment. Médecins sans Frontières said it was shifting its focus from surgery to the "next level" of need.
The confirmed death toll in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area alone had topped 150,000, said Haiti's communications minister, and more bodies remained uncounted.
"Nobody knows how many bodies are buried in the rubble – 200,000, 300,000?" Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue told AP. "Who knows the overall death toll?"
Corpses are still visible in the rubble in neighbourhoods such as Petionville, Gressier, Carrefour and downtown.
Read the full article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/24/haiti-earthquake-death-toll-rises

Haiti rescue continues as man is pulled alive from hotel
By Jacqueline Charles and Lesley Clark.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE — International rescue crews pulled a man alive from the wreckage of a hotel here Saturday, as Haitian government officials said they were still looking for earthquake survivors — despite earlier reports that they had called off search and rescue efforts.
"There has been a misinterpretation of the president's declaration," Haitian Minister of Communications Marie Laurence Lassegue told The Miami Herald.
Before making a final decision on future search and rescue efforts, Haitian officials were waiting for operators on the ground to give President Rene Preval their recommendation — 11 days after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake destroyed Haiti's capital.
Read the full article:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/82906.html

Controversial Danish cartoonist's work raises money for Haiti   
Sunday 24th January, 2010     
A watercolour by the Danish newspaper cartoonist who caused outrage among Muslims worldwide in 2006 has raised $19,000 for the benefit of earthquake-ravaged Haiti, media reports said Sunday.
Kurt Westergaard's non-political watercolour with various motifs was sold at an online auction organised by a gallery in Skanderborg, western Denmark, the Politiken newspaper reported.
Read the rest:
http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=592815

Italian bishops, extraordinary collection for victims of Haiti
24th January 2010
Rome (AsiaNews) - The Italian bishops have organized a special collection to help the people of Haiti, hit by the 12 January earthquake. Accepting the invitation launched by Pope Benedict XVI, the donations collected in churches Sunday, January 24th will be devoted to victims of the earthquake. Meanwhile, International Red Cross sources speak of 45/50 thousand victims, but the number of dead is likely to increase over time, partly because of difficulties encountered by rescuers.
Read the full article:
http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Italian-bishops,-extraordinary-collection-for-victims-of-Haiti-17351.html

More than 150,000 have been buried in Haiti as aid effort continues
By Vivian Sequera & Mike Melia
The Associated Press
Sunday, Jan. 24, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The truckers filling Haiti’s mass graves with bodies reported ever higher numbers: More than 150,000 quake victims have been buried by the government, Communications Minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue said Sunday.
That doesn’t count those still under the debris, carried off by relatives or killed in the outlying quake zone.
"Nobody knows how many bodies are buried in the rubble — 200,000? 300,000? Who knows the overall death toll?" Lassegue said.
Dealing with the living, meanwhile, a global army of aid workers was getting more food into people’s hands but acknowledged falling short. "We wish we could do more, quicker," said Josette Sheeran, chief of the U.N. World Food Program.
Read the full report:
http://www.star-telegram.com/279/story/1918302.html

Haiti Army Occupation
Uploaded 23rd January 2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyGAgW2psn0

First Minutes After Haiti Quake Caught on Camera
Uploaded 19 January 2010

A Brazilian soldier stationed in Port-Au-Prince with the United Nations peacekeeping units in Haiti, captured the chaos and panic that followed the earthquake on Tuesday. Soldier Luis Diego Morais was escorting Brazilian Nobel Peace Prize nominee Zilda Arns, who was speaking inside the Sacre Coeur church, when it collapsed. Using his camera phone, Morais captured the aftermath of the earthquake.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cANVo3BfJKc

Children missing from Haiti hospitals
Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:04:59 GMT
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said Friday children have gone missing from hospitals in Haiti following the devastating earthquake in the country, raising fears they are being trafficked for adoption abroad.
"We have documented around 15 cases of children disappearing from hospitals and not with their own family at the time," said UNICEF adviser Jean Luc Legrand.
"UNICEF has been working in Haiti for many years and we knew the problem with the trade of children in Haiti that existed already beforehand,” he said. "Unfortunately, many of these trade networks have links with the international adoption market."
Read the full report:
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=116790&sectionid=351020706

How Western [read American] Domination Has Undermined Haiti's Ability to Recover from Natural Devastation
By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!. Posted January 21, 2010.
An interview with journalist Kim Ives about Washington's domination of Haiti.
AMY GOODMAN: I’m standing here near the airport in Port-au-Prince. I can’t exactly say my feet are firmly planted on the ground, because this morning, just about 6:00, here in Port-au-Prince, we were in our room and just getting ready to leave for this broadcast, and the earth started to tremble. The floor, the walls, you feel the shake. It is that moment of just extreme panic when everyone in the house, everyone, starts running for their lives out of the house, making their way through rooms, jumping over—holding whatever it was you were holding at that moment.
...But right now we’re joined by Kim Ives. We’ve been traveling together. Kim writes for Haiti Liberté, and he has been working with us through this week. He has been living in Haiti for years, in and out, traveling in and out.
...AMY GOODMAN: And just to be clear, when you talk about the two coups, the one in 1991, the one in 2004, both were of them were the—led to the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
KIM IVES: Correct.
AMY GOODMAN: And you talked about US involvement with those.
KIM IVES: Right. And Aristide, in both cases, was taken from Haiti, essentially by US forces, both times. The first time he ended up spending it in Washington, but now he’s presently in South Africa, where he’s been for these past six years.
But along with this political—these political earthquakes carried out by Washington were the economic earthquakes, the US policy that they wanted to see in place, because Aristide’s government had a fundamentally nationalist orientation, which was looking to build the national self-sufficiency of the country, but Washington would have none of it. They wanted the nine principal state publicly owned industries privatized, to be sold to US and foreign investors.
Read the complete article which goes over four pages here:
http://www.alternet.org/story/145305/
or here on one page:
http://www.luckinlove.com/amyhaiti.htm

Death toll at 200,000. US military to enforce state of emergency in Haiti
By Tom Eley
19th January 2010
The Haitian government declared a state of emergency on Monday, six days after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake laid waste to much of the nation and its capital, Port-au-Prince, killing at least 200,000, according to the latest estimate.
The state of emergency creates martial law conditions that will be enforced by the US military. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had demanded the imposition of the emergency decree during her visit to Haiti on Saturday. "The decree would give the government an enormous amount of authority, which in practice they would delegate to us," Clinton declared.
Read the full article:  http://uruknet.info/index.php?p=m62353&hd=&size=1&l=e

How many of the vulnerable children already exported from Haiti for adoption overseas will be used as paedophile fodder?

US sends 4,000 more troops to Haiti
Aid agencies call for urgent ban on adoptions Strong aftershock adds to Port-au-Prince chaos. By Rory Carroll in Port-au-Prince and Esther Addley
Thursday 21 January 2010, Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Relief efforts in Haiti have been complicated by a powerful aftershock. Photograph: Olivier Laban Mattei/AFP/Getty Images
A new earthquake jolted Port-au-Prince yesterday, sending people fleeing on to the streets and complicating relief efforts as the US dispatched another 4,000 troops to Haiti.
A magnitude 5.9 quake, the most ­powerful aftershock since the 12 ­January cataclysm, rattled ruins in the capital and sowed panic but caused no serious reported damage or casualties.  Full article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/20/haiti-aftershock-port-au-prince-orphans

US troops land at Haiti's presidential palace
Tue, 19 Jan 2010 16:10:06 GMT
US paratroopers descending from four helicopters have taken control of Haiti's presidential palace in the capital city of Port-au-Prince. About 50 US paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division arrived in Haiti's presidential palace on Tuesday aboard four helicopters, AFP correspondents reported. The palace is located in the center of the capital and surrounded by a vast refugee camp. In the meantime, the UN Security Council voted unanimously on Tuesday to send 3,500 extra UN troops and police officers to the quake-hit Haiti in an effort to maintain order there. UN announced that another reason for deploying extra troops to Haiti was to protect the humanitarian aid convoys there. Many Haitians consider the huge presence of US troops in their country a blow to the nation's sovereignty. US military has a long history of involvement in Haiti to influence and control political events there.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=116559&sectionid=351020706

Doctor: Misinformation and Racism Have Frozen Recovery Effort at General Hospital in Port-au-Prince
Published on Tuesday, January 19, 2010 by Democracy Now!
“There are no security issues,” says Dr. Evan Lyon of Partners in Health, reporting from the General Hospital in Port-Au-Prince in Haiti, where 1,000 people are in need of operations. Lyon said the reports of violence in the city have been overblown by the media and have affected the delivery of aid and medical services.
***
JUAN GONZALEZ: Amy Goodman is in Haiti, and we'll be joining her in a few minutes. But first, we turn to a voice from one hospital in Port-au-Prince that was badly destroyed by last week's earthquake. The General Hospital is three blocks from the crumbling National Palace.
Former President Bill Clinton visited the hospital Monday, as hundreds of people with broken limbs and multiple fractures were waiting for medical supplies to arrive.
Read the full report:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/01/19-5

Why does the U.S. continue to stop flights of emergency life-saving medical supplies from landing at Port-au-Prince airport?
a.) Are they protecting their drug trafficking operations between Columbia and Miami?
b.) Or are they establishing a permanent U.S. military base at the airport?

Doctors Without Borders Plane with Lifesaving Medical Supplies Diverted Again from Landing in Haiti
Patients in Dire Need of Emergency Care Dying from Delays in Arrival of Medical Supplies.
Port-au-Prince, January 19, 2010 – A Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) cargo plane carrying 12 tons of medical equipment, including drugs, surgical supplies and two dialysis machines, was turned away three times from Port-au-Prince airport since Sunday night despite repeated assurances of its ability to land there. This 12-ton cargo was part of the contents of an earlier plane carrying a total of 40 tons of supplies that was blocked from landing on Sunday morning. Since January 14, MSF has had five planes diverted from the original destination of Port-au-Prince to the Dominican Republic. These planes carried a total of 85 tons of medical and relief supplies.
Read the full article:
http://web1.doctorswithoutborders.org/press/release.cfm?id=4176&cat=press-release&ref=home-center-relatedlink

MSF Works to Save Lives After Haiti Earthquake
19th January 2010
More than 700 Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) staff are working to provide emergency medical care to earthquake survivors in and around Port-au-Prince. Surgical priorities are amputations and caesarean sections. Experienced staff say they have never seen so many severe injuries.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzEar6aCTxQ
 
IMF Criminals give $100 million loan to Haiti, on top of $165 million it already owes, creating the usual never-ending cycle of debt to the banksters (banker-gangsters):
IMF to Haiti: Freeze Public Wages
By Richard Kim
15th January 2010
Snip:
But it's also time to stop having a conversation about charity and start having a conversation about justice--about recovery, responsibility and fairness. What the world should be pondering instead is: What is Haiti owed?
Haiti's vulnerability to natural disasters, its food shortages, poverty, deforestation and lack of infrastructure, are not accidental. To say that it is the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere is to miss the point; Haiti was made poor--by France, the United States, Great Britain, other Western powers and by the IMF and the World Bank.
...these loans came with conditions, including raising prices for electricity, refusing pay increases to all public employees except those making minimum wage and keeping inflation low. ...the new loans would impose these same conditions. In other words, in the face of this latest tragedy, the IMF is still using crisis and debt as leverage to compel neoliberal reforms.
For Haiti, this is history repeated. As historians have documented, the impoverishment of Haiti began in the earliest decades of its independence, when Haiti's slaves and free gens de couleur rallied to liberate the country from the French in 1804. But by 1825, Haiti was living under a new kind of bondage--external debt. In order to keep the French and other Western powers from enforcing an embargo, it agreed to pay 150 million francs in reparations to French slave owners (yes, that's right, freed slaves were forced to compensate their former masters for their liberty). In order to do that, they borrowed millions from French banks and then from the US and Germany. As Alex von Tunzelmann pointed out, "by 1900, it [Haiti] was spending 80 percent of its national budget on repayments."
Read the full article:
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/517494/print

Recent video showing orderliness of Haitians walking amongst the devastation:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=91e_1263794201

Update 18th January 2010 -
U.S. Acts as Global Thug - Blocks Port-au-Prince Airport to Humanitarian Aid Flights.
Their objective is Clear - U.S. Control of Haiti!
...The US military has taken control of Port-au-Prince airport as a key hub of its military build-up, blocking access by humanitarian flights. Humanitarian flights from France, Brazil, and Italy were refused permission to land, and the Red Cross reported one of its planes was diverted to Santo Domingo, the capital of the neighbouring Dominican Republic.
Read the full report:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jan2010/hait-j18.shtml

Haitians Receive Little Help Despite Promises
By Andrew Cawthorne and Catherine Bremer, Port-au-Prince, Haiti
17th January 2010
World leaders pledged massive aid programmes to rebuild Haiti but desperate earthquake survivors were still waiting on Sunday for food, water and medicine.
http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-01-17-haitians-receive-little-help-despite-promises

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Haiti's disaster has been exacerbated by American political and economic interference, domination and suffering going back more than 100 years. While Cuba immediately sent 30 medical doctors and set up medical clinics in the disaster zone of Port-au-Prince, and China had dispatched dozens of relief workers, the U.S. were dilly-dallying and later sent a handful of military personnel - to do what? And the man acting as president, Obama, contracted ex-presidents Clinton and Bush to c-ordinate aid relief. Why ex-presidents?
Clinton arranged for U.S. multinationals to set up sweat shops in Haiti and other big businesses to exploit Haitians without any benefits to the Haitian economy; Bush ordered American forces to co-ordinate a coupe de tat and abduct the lawful Haitian President Aristide, sending him into exile and then installed their own criminal puppet. And Obama arranged for those two ex-presidents to co-ordinate relief efforts!
It is well known that the narcotics trade from Columbia has been using Haiti as a staging post to send their drugs on to Miami, and it so happens that Clinton's prior presidency was saturated in the heroine trade from South America.
That Obama ordered an aircraft carrier to anchor off the coast of Port-au-Prince, together with a contingent of troops, does not bode well for Haiti nor for the peace of the northern sector of South America.

Port-au-Prince devastation in Haiti on 12th January 2010

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More Haitian arts & crafts at: http://haitian-art-crafts.com/

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