Haiti suffering

Cholera Africa to America

By Carolyn Bennett

Source: Britannica

U.S. citizens are not the only “Americans.” Haitians, too, are Americans ─ citizens of the Americas. Other countries in the Western Hemisphere should be ashamed of what they have done to these Americans. An independent international community ─ if there is such a thing outside our dreams ─ should put a stop to the oppression, exploitation and forced impoverishment that leaves Haitians at the mercy of things, dependent on sectarian and nonsectarian hand-out vultures and corruptors.

For more than a hundred years, thousands of Haitians have died at the hands of killers partnered with brute force of U.S. – allied dynasties and dictators, U.S.-led and agented occupation and destabilization. Political and economic conditions including foreign meddling, militarization and infiltration anchor, permeate and intensify the force of natural disasters. These same foreigners then publish press releases and take to the airwaves feigning “sympathy” and foolish “prayers.”

Haiti is a country forced into poverty where deforested land (land without trees) is hit by cyclones and hurricanes, now this earthquake, then raging mudslides, rising floods ─ not unlike the neglected U.S. Gulf (weakened levees in Katrina’s wake) ─ taking out everything in the path. Inadequately built structures further weakened and destroyed, people, thousands of people, dying. Builders of cathedrals lick their fingers and thumb their prayer pages, preach and pray their vacuous words, instead of helping to build solidly and support honestly, nonviolently a functioning and self-sufficient nation of capable, strong, independent people.

I wrote and posted that bit of editorializing Wednesday, January 13, 2010, under the title FOREIGN-MADE, COMPOUNDED DISASTER — Haiti  —  Instead of vacuous mourning, fix fundamental wrongs against Haiti.

Source: Britannica

Yesterday Free Speech Radio News reported persistent, curable disease in Haiti.

Since the fall (October) of 2010 when the disease broke out, 6,000 (est.) Haitians have died from cholera.

Haitians continue to die from cholera — at an estimated rate of 10 people every single day. Excluded in these official figures are the people of Haiti who die in remote areas and whose deaths go unreported.

Entrenched, incestuous, abusive power and its impact

In July, at the year-and-a-half mark since the Haiti earthquake that ravaged the country and killed 316,000 of its people and left at least a million homeless, the Democracy Now program reported the United States of America and other “international donors” had failed to deliver on pledges but were “exerting excessive control over the reconstruction process.” Mainly in the mix was opportunist, husband of the U.S. Secretary of State, former U.S. President William (Bill) Jefferson Clinton — double dipping as UN special envoy to Haiti and co-chair of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission and as hawker of his Clinton Foundation funding of faulty projects in Haiti.

Democracy Now reported July 12 on a new Nation magazine report that Clinton Foundation-funded shelters in Haiti were unsafe because Haiti is hurricane prone and the trailers funded were riddled with problems (documented previously in New Orleans): mold and shoddy construction. Some had “worrying levels of formaldehyde.”

These Clinton-funded trailers had been built, the report said, “by the same company, Clayton Homes, which was, at that moment, being sued for providing formaldehyde-laced trailers for residents displaced after Hurricane Katrina” [New Orleans].

The co-author of the Nation report said on Democracy Now, “‘we’ve been requesting documentation of any bidding process from the Clinton Foundation, and we have not gotten documentation. We know [the trailers] were built by Clayton Homes, which is currently being sued in the United States for exposing [Gulf Coast] Hurricane Katrina survivors to injurious levels of formaldehyde.”

The plaintiffs in this FEMA-formaldehyde lawsuit claim their exposure was a direct result of residing in trailers Clayton Homes had sold to FEMA [U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency under President George W. Bush’s buddy, Michael Brown].

“‘The Clinton Foundation,’” Isabel Macdonald said, “‘has not answered our questions about any due diligence that was done.

“‘We know that trailers are considered a liability in the United States in the case of a hurricane. FEMA tells Americans to evacuate trailers.

“‘The real question is, how did Bill Clinton think this would be acceptable in Haiti — to provide these trailers as hurricane shelters, to buy them from a company facing this kind of lawsuit over formaldehyde?

“‘What does it say about the reconstruction efforts in Haiti, if the very first project approved by the commission that’s supposed to ensure accountability and transparency in Haiti’s rebuilding passes this kind of project?

“‘Bill Clinton himself has his hands all over it, and he is the co-chair of this commission that is supposed to ensure that Haiti is “built back better.”’”

After the report was published, the Clinton Foundation, also reported on Democracy Now, said they “will send in a team of experts to address the article’s findings.”

Source: Britannica

What I wrote last year is still true. Other countries and powerful officials and entities such as the Clintons and non-profiteers of various sorts in the Western Hemisphere should be ashamed of and made to account for what they have done and are doing to peoples of the Americas and similarly to peoples of Africa.

It doesn't have to be this way. We can do better. 

Sources and notes

Source: Free Speech Radio News, August 15, 2011, http://fsrn.org/audio/headlines-monday-august-15-2011/8967

“Clinton Foundation Accused of Sending Haiti Shoddy Trailers Found Toxic After Katrina,” July 12, 2011, http://www.democracynow.org/2011/7/12/clinton_foundation_accused_of_sending_haiti

“Clinton Foundation to Review Haiti Trailers Following Exposé, July 15, 2011, http://www.democracynow.org/2011/7/15/headlines#9

Freelance journalist and former communications director of the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, Isabel Macdonald was co-author of the Nation piece “The Shelters that Clinton Built.”

AFRICA SOMALIA

United Nations has warned of serious cholera outbreaks in various regions of famine-stricken Somalia.

Source: Britannica

The World Health Organization (WHO) says this year there have been reported some 4,272 cases of acute watery diarrhea among people in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu.

More than 180 people have already fallen victim to the disease in Mogadishu and surrounding areas and that half of the victims are children under the age of two.

The UN has warned that the deadly illness could quickly spread to the south as many possible carriers flee the famine that has hit some 12.5 million people in the Horn of Africa.

Iran has sent a second humanitarian aid convoy to drought-stricken Somalia. Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi says the country also plans to donate $25 million dollars to help with relief efforts.

More than 29,000 children under the age of five have died of hunger over the past three months in southern Somalia.

An estimated 3.7 million people in Somalia — around a third of the population — are on the brink of starvation.

Millions of people in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda have been affected by the worst drought in the region in 60 years.

“‘Cholera epidemic spreading in Somalia,’” August 12, 2011,  http://www.presstv.ir/section/351020501.html

Also:  “36 children starve to death in Somalia,” August 9, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/193160.html

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Bennett's books available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; The Book Den, Ltd.: BookDenLtd@frontiernet.net [Danville, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY]; LONGS’ Cards and Books: http://longscardsandbooks.com/ [Penn Yan, NY] • Articles also at World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire
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Merciless disease, preventable death unjust

“Haiti...just another death by cholera”

Thursday January 20, 2011, Amy E. A. Osborne, a medical student volunteered in Haiti over the Christmas break and wrote to CBC’s Dispatches
Excerpt, minor editing by Carolyn Bennett

“Cholera treatment centers are easy to set up. It just takes resources — people and supplies… Someone actually caring,” Amy E. A. Osborne wrote from Haiti —

“…Our driver came up, tapped me frantically on the shoulder. He tells me there is an emergency. I follow him to the other ward and find a teenage boy lying half-naked on one of the cholera beds. I think to myself that he must be mortified to be lying there, so exposed, his naked buttocks hanging over the hole cut in the cot so his diarrhea will simply fall into the bucket placed below his bed.…

“I get closer and see that he is not mortified because he is barely conscious. His eyes have sunken into his head; the skin on his face pulled taut over his now-prominent cheekbones. I rush over and feel for a pulse in his right wrist. It is not there and his hand is cool. I grab his other wrist and there is still no pulse.…

“I notice something white coming out of the boy’s mouth and I look closer — white foam is bubbling out. It begins to pour out of his mouth and both nostrils. At first, I wipe it away, but then I notice that he is not choking on it because he is no longer breathing. I sit back and just watch it flow out. The doctors arrive and one of them stands back and observes (he has a tendency to be less than inclined to touch cholera patients) while the other doctor does a few half-hearted chest compressions. We have not been able to find a vein and there is nothing more to be done. It is over.

“There is little time for compassion in a cholera outbreak. The ‘corpses’ are highly contagious and need to be quickly cleaned with disinfectant and then put in a body bag to be buried. I want to give the family time to grieve — they just lost a 19-year-old boy — but the families of the other patients want him gone immediately. Someone runs for a body bag.

“I pull the sheet over his face as people are gathering around to gawk. His mother is in shock and does not seem to believe that he is really gone. She goes over and pulls the sheet down. She touches his face. She pulls the sheet down further and touches his stomach. Then she touches his feet, one at a time. I do not know what she is looking for, but she does not find it. She sits down beside him and looks incredulous. I am about to be the only person in the room to cry so I step out onto the balcony and take deep breaths. I manage to pull it together.

“Someone arrives with the body bag and Kanako lays it out on the bed … Together we open it and [the 19-year-old’s] mother and brother take his arms and legs and lift him into it. Kanako and I reach in, take his hands and lay them on his chest. Then we zip the bag closed, over his still open eyes.

“He does not look dead. He looks like even he cannot believe that he has gone — that one day he was a normal teenage boy and the next day he died the most degrading death a human being can ever experience.

“Cholera is merciless. It robs you of any and all dignity you once had. Untreated, you can lose up to 20 liters [5 gallons or 21 quarts] of fluid a day in the form of diarrhea and vomit. You will lose all of your strength and you will literally lie in a pile of your own diarrhea until you die. The management is simple. You need fluids. It is just that easy. Cholera treatment centers (CTCs) are easy to set up. It just takes resources — people and supplies. It just takes someone actually caring…

“What is happening [in Haiti] is unjust.”


Source
January 27 and 30, 2011 letters, Dispatches with Rick MacInnes-Rae, http://www.cbc.ca/dispatches/the-view/your-dispatches/2011/01/20/haitijust-another-death-by-cholera/
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Bennett's books available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; The Book Den, Ltd.: BookDenLtd@frontiernet.net [Danville, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY]; LONGS’ Cards and Books: http://longscardsandbooks.com/ [Penn Yan, NY]
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“Heart broken open moving forward” Haiti ─ Dr Lyon

From Dr Evan Lyon’s report back from two weeks in Haiti
Edited excerpt for Today’s Insight News by Carolyn Bennett

The pain is staggering, crippling. Everyone who has watched the news or has friends or family in Haiti has touched the edges of this pain. Everyone who has seen the broken bodies and buildings, who has inhaled the dust and stench of dying in and around Port-au-Prince knows this even more intimately. Those lucky enough to live will carry some of this pain for the rest of our lives. I know my heart has never been broken like this.

I also feel my heart has broken open ─ enough to let me work, enough to stay upright and keep moving forward with the hope of helping my suffering sisters and brothers. When we could not help, which was very often, I still felt open to witness, to listen, to offer my presence and kindness.

It seems reasonable at this point to say that more than 200,000 have died and one-and-a-half to two million made homeless and displaced.… There is pressure on the infrastructure of the entire nation with so many fleeing the city to live in the countryside and in smaller cities. Much of Port-au-Prince and Jacmel needs rebuilding. Leogane is nearly completely destroyed.

We need to stay with Haiti for a long time. Our medicines and healthcare will play an important role but, in reality, a limited one. Durable health and fulfillment of other basic human rights grows best from social conditions and the basics: shelter, water, food, sanitation, families, education, a healthy environment and reforestation, art, music.

We need to remain open and optimistic.

The only other choice is nihilism, to be broken.…

‘We are alive.’

We can continue.

Sources and notes
Dr. Evan Lyon is a long time clinical volunteer with Partners in Health and more than a decade experience in rural Haiti. He is a graduate of Harvard Medical School and completed his residency in Internal Medicine at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH). He is currently on the faculty of the Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities at BWH. Dr. Lyon’s work in Haiti has focused on community-based care for HIV and tuberculosis. In addition to his work with Partners in Health, he is an active member of the People’s Health Movement. http://www.environment.uwaterloo.ca/ers/faculty/narya/PtHphotosandbios.htm
Partners in Health's work in Haiti and worldwide, http://www.pih.org/.
“‘Breaking hearts open’ in Haiti” (by Evan Lyon), February 2, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/haitiearthquake/2010/02/20102272125725938.html
Dr Evan Lyon had just returned from Haiti where he spent two weeks working as a volunteer clinician with Partners In Health (PIH), a non-profit healthcare organization, at the University General Hospital (HUEH) in the capital Port-au-Prince.

MEMORY, HISTORY MONUMENT TO PEOPLE ─ CHILE

Excerpts, editing for Today’s Insight News
Basic translation, Bing Translator, http://www.microsofttranslator.com/Default.aspx

Remembering victims under dictatorship (1973 – 1990) and people’s struggle to protect and defend human rights

From a cornerstone laid two years earlier, Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet today opened her country’s Museum of Memory and Human Rights. This is some of what the president had to say at the ceremony.

No more Secrets
“Denial and concealment of captivity pain or death partnered the cruelty and the lie, hatred and indifference, fanaticism and intolerance ravaged a country in crisis. Deeply divided and confronted [the country] was unable to overcome differences in the frameworks of democracy.”


“The tragedy can have many explanations, but no justification … No reason someone can say that the crisis could justify gross and systematic violations of human rights because, in all circumstances ─ even the most critical human beings ─ we are obliged to ethical judgment.”

Strength in Honest Recall
“We cannot change our past; we can only learn from the experiences … This is an opportunity and a challenge which is only possible from memory ─ through the memory of contemporaries and transmission to future generations.… Doing so makes us better, stronger, because [it] warns of the ways that we [should] never go as country.”

Collective, “tireless work and analysis of the testimonies and evidence left by victims and perpetrators, allowed [us] to establish the facts and its leaders; as well as [to gain full awareness] of the depth of the damage done to the country.”

Tribute to People, their Unity
“… [It] is clearly the representation of Chile ─ A Chile who loves freedom, truth, justice, but above all things, that believe in the dignity of its people.”

“The opening of this Museum is a powerful signal of the force of a United country, based on shared commitment to never return to suffer a tragedy such as that in this place we will always remember.

“… It is essential to preserve our unity and coexistence [and] preserve truth and justice which has both cost us [to] reach.”

Space Dedicated to People, easy access to their knowledge, history
“This Museum is a space for the construction of the memoirs in Chile … a public space to understand, evaluate and learn.”

The museum’s three floors of documents, testimonies, objects, and audiovisual material on the period of dictatorship (1973 – 1990) spreads 5,500 square meters [18,046 feet] and a square of 8,000 square meters [26,247 feet]. It houses a documentation center for public dissemination, a specialized library, an auditorium and the Memorial Plaza to be connected to the Quinta Normal Metro station.


Sources
Presidenta Bachelet inauguró Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos La Presidenta de la República, Michelle Bachelet, inauguró el Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos, espacio nacional para el rescate de la memoria de las víctimas de la dictadura y de las acciones de protección y defensa de los derechos humanos que tuvieron lugar en Chile, entre 1973 y 1990.
Tr: President Bachelet opened Museum of memory and the rights human the President of Chile, Michelle Bachelet, opened the Memorial Museum and human rights, national space for the rescue of the memory of the victims of the dictatorship and the actions of protection and defence of human rights that took place in Chile between 1973 and 1990.
Government of Chile, National Council of culture and the arts, creating Chile, http://www.consejodelacultura.cl/portal/index.php?page=articulo&articulo=10963
Source: Published Presidencia.cl: Tuesday January 12, 2010; basic translation, Bing Translator, http://www.microsofttranslator.com/Default.aspx
http://www.calculateme.com/Length/index.htm

Also from the Americas, breaking news is that the deeply struggling people of Haiti have been assaulted this evening by an earthquake measuring, preliminarily, 7.2 (5.1-5.9 aftershocks) on the Richter scale.