Pain Rush in Haiti

The Pain Rush in Haiti

by Ezili Dantò - HLLN

 Clorox Hunger lives in the same space that billions of dollars in "aid" are supposed to have been poured

Haitian Perspectives - In a May 23, 2013 photo, a malnourished 4-year-old Michelene Thelusme sits outside her home in Belle Anse, Haiti. In a country where half the food is imported, meals are becoming less affordable as the value of Haiti's currency depreciates against the U.S. dollar.

A disenfranchised Haiti means opportunity for the imperialist and their Left talking right wing vultures.

Bourgeoisie Freedom or democracy is, for instance, the dissonance beating at you when Clorox Hunger, emaciated Black babies, live in the same space that $9billions of dollars in humanitarian aid are supposed to have been poured. It's the confusion one feels when one juxtaposes the deep, Clorox-burning hunger ravaging the population with how the United Kingdom just opened up a new embassy in Haiti to boost UK companies "trading" in earthquake-hit Haiti.

The burning hunger, lack of relief and exploitation of the poor is easily explained by the indigenous Haitians who never saw any part of the $9-billion in his rural town. But the powers of the NGOs, the US humanitarian occupation of Haiti are so vast, so multi-layered and interconnected with the myth of white superiority and its media forces that the rural Haiti voice is drowned-out completely. For the "schooled" stakeholders involved, both in Haiti and abroad, are mostly so vested in US imperialism, US foreign policy and white supremacy they must continue to define and defend their presence in Haiti as "development work."

The renown Black psychiatrist, Frantz Fanon, once wrote:

"Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.” --Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks Starvation is everywhere in Haiti not just in rural Haiti, evidencing the deadly and unconscionable consequences of the current US-led world pain rush in Haiti.

There are too many "schooled" Haitians either indifferent to or plain collaborating with empire abroad and in Haiti. Most, passively suffer the racist capitalistic brutality of Papa Clinton, Paul Farmer-led NGOs, the UN and that overseer Barack Obama killing civilized, dignified co-existence in Haiti.

The children are dying. Haiti is dying, dying from the hidden US occupation behind UN mercenary guns. Dying from cholera, dying from Clorox hunger, drought, hurricanes, earthquake evictions, dying in hopelessness and despair, while in Petionville the cultural genocide has been worse than when that butcher of Haiti, Franklin D. Roosevelt - who was ironically so loved in America for his so-called New Deal egalitarian ideals “to make a country in which no one is left out."

But in Haiti, Franklin D. Roosevelt was known only for his almost Rochambeau-like butchery of egalitarian ideals, his butchery of the unarmed peasants, repression of Haiti indigenous religion, rewriting Haiti's Constitution in 1915 as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, giving a Clintonesque-Democrat face to stealing Haiti lands for the corporatocracy his ilk represented that was clear-cutting centuries-old Haiti trees for the Euro-tribes world war machine, instituting force labor chain gangs, dropping bombs on peasant farmers objecting to the US Marine occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934.

Not since then, has Haiti seen so many whites on the ground. Not since then have there been so much disease, desperation, death and hunger for the Black majority mixed in with four star hotels, token poverty programs and tourist attractions. That's what the white tribes and repugnant Black collaborators, their imperial war machines, false benevolence, endless death, dependency, dictatorships and cold wars, bring to indigenous populations world over. Death, starvation, despair, genocide - no raising of the indigenous population's standard of living.

It's in the face on these starving Haiti children - who cannot eat from our grandparent’s fruit trees now polluted by Monsanto, USAID nitrate/fertilizers and the UN cholera feces... Not to mention the destruction of Haiti poultry, rice, and all local industry from the ravages of the rabid elites privatization schemes, dumping Arkansas and Miami products that destroy local Haiti food production.

Never mind that Donna Karen sells Haiti crafts at Saks or to Hollywood, Sean Penn sponsors a Haiti marathon, Paul Farmer built a new hospital from quake remains, the Clintons built new sweatshops, all so that the tourists may be steered toward lying edifices masking Western imperialism, patriarchy, domination, blatant NGO racism and capitalism. For, it's the norm for US bourgeois democracy to tout "no one is left out."

It's as real today under Barack Obama as it was under the murderous FDR regime in Haiti back in 1915. Their new deals mostly leave out the Black majority populations in their sight. Indeed, bourgeois democracy's debilitating dissonance is refined by the Obama face to imperialism.

Under this more deadly bourgeois democracy, Haiti self-determination and cultural genocide are not only acceptable collateral damages but invisible injuries.

Our pains are turned back upon us, used to enrich NGOs, mining companies, the beltway bandits and most Western adventurers. It's not a gold rush in Haiti that's profitable to the Euro ruling tribes, but the rush to inflict more pain and collect, collect, collect it against the myth of white superiority, white universal love for all humankind using the structures that carry this myth forth since World War II ---the UN Security Council system, the NGO system, the foreign aid system, the International Monetary Fund/World Bank/World Trade Organization system. Disaster Capitalism is all about inflicting pain on the poor and Black then capitalizing on Black pain.

The ensuring social chaos is then capitalized upon to set up puppet neo-Duvalierist US governments in Haiti, for the World Bank to draft Haiti mining laws, and for the uninterrupted Euro-US pillage and plunder of Haiti Riches - over $20billion in gold reserves, its iridium, silver, copper, coal and the Haiti oil cache Haiti geologists say is "an Olympic pool to Venezuela's glass of water." (Video report on Haiti Riches, Zili Dlo solar project and the works of Ezili Dantò/HLLN.)

Under the US occupation, it's a "pain rush" in Haiti. Newspapers, foundations, “humanitarians”, think tanks write about it, elevate it, cash in on it, and keep it going, won't tell you, a la Jared Diamond, that the Haiti struggle is cleared of cognitive dissonance only when you factor in structuralized white supremacist hatred - its genocidal germs, guns and steel. Oh, no, that's downplayed.

Today's mainstream media reports that chronic hunger in Haiti is rising mostly because of geography - the weather!

According to the Associated Press, much of the hunger crisis "stems from too little rain, and then too much," corrupt Haiti politicians and because half of Haiti's food is imported.

But if Haiti is corrupt, then it's a 1cent corruption to the 99cent that stays in the hands of the Westerners per aid dollars to Haiti. If Haiti imports half its food, it's because of US destruction of Haiti agriculture - the forcible US disruption of a country that had an overproduction of food in the 1950s.

Some thirty-five years ago, the US started dumping Miami rice, corn, poultry, year-round into Haiti while forcing powerless Haiti governments to lift up protective tariffs.

Simultaneously, each time these “look-at-the-poor-starving-Haiti-babies” articles are written, the USAID beltway bandits, the UN and their NGOs will rush in to dump food aid instead of using aid monies to buy food from the local Haiti farmers in areas where there’s no crisis. But that is not a money-making proposition for the NGOs.

Moreover, the imperialist imposes World Bank conditions upon Haiti government prohibiting it from subsidizing its own local farmers and US Congress preside over laws prohibiting aid to come in the form of cash to buy from local Haiti farmers and give it as food aid to the folks affected by drought or storms. These articles will not mention, for instance, that US agricultural laws, like the 1980s Bumpers Amendment, restricts assistance for agricultural development if it may improve the recipient country’s ability to compete with U.S. farmers.

Also, if too much or too little rain alone could cause a hunger crisis, then Californians living in the Salinas Valley in Monterey California would all be dead from starvation since it doesn't rain, in one of the most fertile crop producing areas in the United States.

There's mostly not one drop of rain there between April to November of each year. Yet, the Salinas Valley in California, USA is one of the most fertile areas in the world, the "salad bowl" of America.

What Californians have in the Salinas Valley that you won't find in Haiti is water infrastructure, water management.

How long does it take for the fake charity workers to help build the infrastructure that's necessary for water management in Haiti? It's been more than 50-years of incessant destructive “aid” to Haiti. For fifty years, aid workers and the "humanitarians" have claimed billion in the name of "building Haiti back better," building infrastructure, building clean water/sanitation and they've collected and collected monies for these otherwise laudable purposes. But somehow they've never managed to put down permanent infrastructure in Haiti. That would mean they're out of a job, no?

Indeed, US economic, social and political policies in Haiti creates chaos, destroys the public infrastructure Haiti had in place with coup d'etats, regime changes and by pushing Haiti governments NOT to invest in updating or rebuilding old irrigation system, reservoirs, aquifers. Haiti riches are pillaged and stolen, not allowed to be exploited for national domestic development or to build environmentally sustainable aqueducts or reservoirs for capturing water, managing and storing water for household use, industrial use and agricultural use. US foreign policy in Haiti pushed rural farmers off their valuable lands and into Site Soley urban slums in the early 1980s where US sweatshop development did not work and these country folks would face crushing deprivations, UN massacres in 2004 and then massive deaths in the 2010 earthquake.

If you’re a peasant farmer in Haiti, do the labor intensive work to prepare the land, plant and harvest your crops, but can’t make a profit at the market because US rice is for free, what can you do if the sweatshops are gone, your farm is gone, but to get on a rickety boat to escape and find new life? US unfair trade makes it futile to go back and plant when every minute, food aid makes the Haiti peasants' harvest more expensive to buy than donated or subsidized US goods. Although the AP article notes that:

"In 1997 some 1.2 million Haitians didn't have enough food to eat. A decade later the number had more than doubled. Today, that figure is 6.7 million, or a staggering 67 percent of the population that goes without food some days..." (-2 out of 3 people face hunger as Haiti woes mount, AP, June 10, 2013)It doesn't contextualize it with US incessant destabalization, its sweatshop development and failed 40-year export led economy initiatives. But in any case, generally when a glimpse of the devastating depravity of the US occupation sneaks through the mainstream colonial narrative, it is quickly "democratized" by locating one Establishment "expert" to say that "there's sufficient proof that at least some of the aid is reaching the population." This journalistic trick then fully gains root to lift up (destructive) foreign aid as the only reason why the poor in Haiti are still alive. You'll not read the truth, which is that the over $2billion yearly in Haiti Diaspora remittances is the ONLY real direct aid to Haiti that actually reaches the population and keeps the poor alive.

Such colonial news on Haiti, will mostly remain silent about the centuries upon centuries and current US racist destabilization of Haiti while pimping out photos of our starving Black babies to sell newspapers, re-validate white supremacy, fuel humanitarian imperialism's raison d'etre, give the NGOs a document to go raise more funds for their coffers.

The Euro colonial deforestation and their centuries of environmental harm or current open pit mining initiatives in Haiti are mostly non-existent in these colonial narratives on Haiti. For, only the peasants' wood cutting for charcoal is highlighted. Nothing is noted about the current 10-year US occupation of Haiti behind UN guns - the totality of its devastating destructions in Haiti and failures. Nor the US support for the Duvalier dictatorships for 30 years from 1957 to 1986, the two US-sponsored coup d'etats in 1991 and then 2004 to reinstate Duvalierism over a democratically elected Haiti government, followed by the current US occupation behind UN guns. After all, the white savior industrial complex is as economically and socially benign today as it was during the Western tribes’ chattel enslavement of Ayiti, no?

"The US public won't be taught about the nearly 10-year old US occupation of Haiti by the media. But in fact today, the US is Haiti's mother country. And all around us the “colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country's cultural standards.” - Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

Ezili Dantò of HLLN
June 10, 2013
Another day under US occupation behind UN guns
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In this May 23, 2013 photo, an unidentified malnourished boy stands near his home in Belle Anse, Haiti. Haiti in general and the mountain villages in particular have long suffered from chronic hunger. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) View Photo

In this May 22, 2013 photo, a malnourished 2-year-old Jerydson Baltazar is weighed by a community volunteer in Belle Anse, Haiti. The United Nations' World Food Program reports that nearly a quarter of Haiti's children suffer from malnutrition, though that figure is higher in places such as Guatemala and the Sahel region in Africa. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) View Photo.

In this May 22, 2013 photo, a malnourished 5-year-old Dieufort Jean stands in his kitchen holding a spoon as he waits for a meal in the community of Mabriole near the town of Belle Anse in Haiti. Mabriole town official Geneus Lissage fears that death is imminent for these children if Haitian authorities and humanitarian workers don't do more to stem the hunger problems. (AP Photo/ Dieu Nalio Chery) View Photo

In this May 22, 2013 photo, Darloune Charles, 9, removes scales from a fish in her home in Belle Anse, Haiti. In a country where half the food is imported, meals are becoming less affordable as the value of Haiti's currency depreciates against the U.S. dollar. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) View Photo

In this May 23, 2013 photo, a malnourished 4-year-old Michelene Thelusme sits outside her home in Belle Anse, Haiti. In a country where half the food is imported, meals are becoming less affordable as the value of Haiti's currency depreciates against the U.S. dollar. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) View Photo - Hunger in Haiti worst than ever.