The Ruthless Truth blog

Robert Roth
Dissident Voice
Sat, 13 Mar 2010 20:58 EST

“Two months after the devastating earthquake, the situation in Haiti is downright criminal,” says Robert Roth. According to the spokesperson of the activist network Haiti Action Committee, major western players such as the US are more interested in defending their own geopolitical interests in Haiti than truly helping the hardly hit Caribbean country.
Johnny Van Hove: Haiti has disappeared almost completely from the front pages. Since you are in close contact with a number of Haitian grassroots organizations via the Haiti Action Committee, could you describe how the situation down there is at the moment?
Robert Roth: The situation is a catastrophe. At this point about 230,000 people have died and 3,000,000 people are still left homeless. Hundreds of thousands of people have no shelter whatsoever and are literally sleeping outside. Under sheets, not in tents. In many, many areas there is no water, no tents, no healthcare. One to two million people are in internal refugee camps that are now dotting Port-au-Prince. They were set up by international aid agencies, but they are in terrible shape.
The lack of housing is truly astounding. We have been getting numerous requests from the poorest communities in Haiti for funds for tents. With the rainy season coming, there is a very grave danger of the spread of typhoid, measles, and dysentery. It could be one these situations in which the aftermath of a disaster is even worse than the disaster itself. The situation was, and is, truly criminal.
JVH: Considering the hundreds of international aid organizations working in Haiti, how could it have come to this situation?
RR: The total amount of financial support that has gone through aid groups is close to one billion dollars. Haiti is truly flooded with aid organizations and yet very few aid goods have been distributed. Most goods have been sitting at the airport or in big warehouses. People who were pulled out under the rubble by Haitians could not receive medical aid because it was not distributed efficiently.
You have to distinguish among the aid groups, of course. Two groups which have been very consistent in distributing aid goods are Partners in Health and Doctors Without Borders. On the other hand, the Red Cross has been mostly invisible in the poorest communities in Haiti. There have been protests directly at the Red Cross warehouses and offices, demanding that the aid be distributed. The effectiveness of a number of the aid agencies has been astonishingly weak. And when a country has been occupied, when its democratic organizations have been repressed, and when community-based organizations are marginalized, earthquake relief just will not immediately get into the hands of the people.
JVH: What is the role of the UN and the US – which have been major players in Haitian history – in the current catastrophe?
RR: The UN and the US have looked at their role as a security measure. Their concept of aid has been militarized, which means that they have not been diligent in handing out aid to communities. The US military has eleven thousand soldiers down there, the UN nine thousand. Six thousand UN troops have been there since the coup against the democratically elected president Aristide in 2004 and they have been a repressive force, an occupying army in Haiti. In the wake of the earthquake, the US and UN armies have been essentially patrolling Haiti. I am not saying that there has been no help. They have started to distribute food, tents, health supplies. But it has been much more limited than you would expect. There have been many reports from various communities about how armed vehicles just drove by their communities without helping them.
JVH: What were the effects of the “militarization” of the relief aid by the US, amongst other countries – Canada and Japan sent hundreds of troops too, for instance? The American/Haitian activist Marguerite Laurent suggested on her blog that humanitarian aid was blocked in favor of military equipment after the US took over the Haitian airports in the first few days after the earth quake.
RR: The militarization of the relief aid really delayed the distribution of food, water, and particularly medical aid. One of the effects was that in the first few days after the earthquake, five cargo planes of Doctors Without Borders were turned away and rerouted to the Dominican Republic. Partners In Help estimated that about 20,000 people died each day that aid was delayed.
JVH: Is the lack of security in Haiti an explanation for the heavy emphasis on sending in forces? Numerous media reports after the earthquake suggested that insecurity, rapes, and violence erupting during foreign aid handouts were mounting.
RR: The images of insecurity in the media are not accurate at all. There are always security issues in any country. But what is remarkable is the discipline, the non-violence, the resilience, the creativity, and the cooperation that Haitians have exhibited in the face of this catastrophe. Even days and days and days after not receiving aid, the US and UN could not point to any major security issues.
JVH: If Haiti has not been as insecure as hinted at in the media, how can the massive military response of the US be explained?
RR: The primary fear of the US was popular, political unrest. Haiti truly has a very politically conscious population which has never gone down easily. After the coup in 2004, thousands of people were killed and thousands more imprisoned and held without charges. Every member of the Lavalas government – from high level ministers to local officials – were removed from office. Others were forced into exile.
Still, there has never been an end to grass roots organizing. Labor unions protested the price of gas and the privatizing of the phone company. There were major demonstrations demanding Aristide’s return.
Just recently there was a very successful electoral boycott because the Haitian government denied Lavalas the right to participate in the election, even though it is the most popular political party in Haiti.
The US is still not comfortable with the popular movement in Haiti. You can see this in the continued banishment of former President Aristide from Haiti. While the Obama Administration has called on former Presidents Clinton and Bush – who was responsible for the 2004 coup – to help coordinate aid, it opposes the return of a former democratically elected president who wants to return as a private citizen to aid in the reconstruction efforts.
JVH: Surely, there must be other reasons to justify the militarization of the aid relief?
RR: There is clearly a major geopolitical and economic interest in Haiti, most prominently by the US. There is a long history of US intervention in the area, including a direct US occupation from 1915-1934. This occupation created the Haitian military and led eventually to the Duvalier dictatorships. In 1991, the US overthrew Aristide and then again in 2004. So the US is clearly opposed to the social program of Lavalas and to its example in the Caribbean.
Haiti is also strategically located close to both Cuba and Venezuela. Haiti is rich in minerals, such as marble, uranium, iridium, and oil. Big corporations, such as the Royal Caribbean Lines, are creating a tourist center in the north which could have an enormous value for the tourist industry in the Caribbean area. And Haiti is looked at as a source of cheap labor. There is a long history of garment assembly in Haiti. Cherokee, Wal-Mart, Disney, and Major League Baseball all had relationships with Haiti. If the US plan for Haiti is implemented, the numbers of sweatshops in Port-au-Prince will surely increase.
JVH: Naomi Klein suggested that “disaster capitalism” is striking in Haiti. Would you agree?
RR: Absolutely. This is disaster capitalism on steroids. Number one, you have had an earthquake that ravaged the infrastructure of a country which has been made poor over the centuries. Secondly, you have more than 20,000 troops and massive amounts of capital circulating there. Plus, the Haitian government has been a very passive partner in the aftermath of the earthquake. That is a perfect recipe. The reconstruction conferences in Montreal and Miami are indicating that Haiti will be rebuilt along the lines of the organizations attending them: the US, Canada, the World Bank, the Clinton Foundation, the IMF, major business corporations such as the Royal Caribbean Lines, the Soros Foundation. Haiti is like a blank board in their minds. It is going be a feeding frenzy soon.
JVH: The Haitian government was attending the reconstruction meetings too, though. What is its role in the current crisis?
RR: What was remarkable throughout the crisis was the invisibility of the government. There are two reasons for that. First of all, the government really seems to have lost its connection to the Haitian people. President Preval has been major disappointment since he was elected in 2006. He has basically been an arm of the occupation forces of the UN. Secondly, the government of Haiti has been starved for years and years by the international lending organizations, including USAID. Even now, the government does not receive true support. It literally gets only one cent for every dollar spent on Haiti. That really creates a dependency on international aid agencies. When a crisis such as this happens, the government is underfunded and the aid agencies take over. All in all, the invisibility and compliance of the Haitian government is a token for the fact that the US, the UN, and the NGOs have taken control of the country.
JVH: Since the relief agencies are not performing efficiently, who has been providing aid at the grassroots level in Haiti?
RR: What is happening in Haiti is that local communities are helping themselves. The mainstream image of Haitians is that they cannot help themselves, that they are dysfunctional and violent. The truth could not be more different. Haiti is a very well organized country at the grassroots level. There are community committees in every one of the poor neighborhoods, which have been organizing protests in order to get the aid goods distributed. They have also been contacting international organizations they know they can trust and started distributing the aid goods to their local communities.
An organization which has been very important is the Aristide Foundation, which has been setting up aid programs, especially in the refugee camps. They have created mobile schools, they have developed local health clinics, and they are also setting up a big health center at the foundation’s site. Partners in Health has continued to provide important support as well. The Haiti Emergency Relief Fund is funding community projects that are not getting aided by the big relief organizations.
JVH: According to Marguerite Laurent in the current issue of the American magazine, The Progressive, the people that could be saved were saved mostly by Haitians “frantically using their bare hands to dig through the rubble and lift pulverized concrete in the immediate forty-eight hours after the earthquake”. Does that give an accurate image of how the digging and rescuing took place?
RR: Laurent is absolutely right. The chair of the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund, for instance, was in Haiti with his family at the time of the quake, and they saw first hand how Haitians were working day and night to save their families and friends. That was basically the story in Haiti: Haitians saving themselves and bandaging and housing each other. They waited for aid that never came and that is why so many people have died unnecessarily.
JVH: Nevertheless, Haiti cannot rebuild itself without external help. The Haitian diaspora will keep on sending close to a billion dollars to their homeland every year. But what role can international aid agencies play? Who should be supported in order to help Haiti?
RR: You can’t talk about disaster capitalism and then donate to the big NGOs. If you donate to the Red Cross, for instance, some help will go to Haiti. At the same time, you are also donating to a system which is not designed to empower Haitians. So if you are progressive, if you want democracy in Haiti, and if you have some faith in the Haitian people, you should be looking for the groups most closely related to, and working with, the grassroots organizations. Hopefully, people can donate to organizations like the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund that are doing just that.

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/204675-Haiti-Disaster-Capitalism-on-Steroids-An-interview-with-Robert-Roth

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United States-China relations are on the rocks recently, China says that they have been seriously disrupted. Essentially, China feels that it is being threatened by the United States and this has been mounting since 1999. The threats are coming in the form of diplomacy, however Michel Chossudovsky says that the United States also has missiles pointed at Chinese cities.

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David Lindorff
This Can’t Be Happening
Fri, 05 Mar 2010 20:08 EST

The stated goal of the US-led War in Afghanistan, according to the Obama Administration, is to defeat the Taliban and establish a stable democratic government over the entire country. Critical to that goal is establishing a professional Afghan army and police force that is not corrupt, and that has the respect of the Afghan people.
But reports out of Canada suggest that far from creating such a military and police force, the so-called International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) is turning a blind eye to the thuggish criminality of those organizations, both to avoid growing opposition in ISAF member countries, and to avoid offending those organizations in Afghanistan.
The issue in question is routine rape and sodomy of children by Afghan soldiers and police operating on Canadian-run bases in the Kandahar region.
As reported last fall in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, Canadian military chaplins and some soldiers have been complaining as far back as 2006 that Afghan security forces have been sodomizing young boys on their base. These military whistle-blowers charge that the military brass has been ignoring or burying their complaints, fearing the bad publicity they could generate.
The paper reports that Canadian military police have also complained, as reported by Brig.-Gen. J.C. Collin, commander of Land Force Central Area, that they were being told “not to interfere in incidents in which Afghan forces were having sex with children.”
According to the paper, the Canadian military command has argued that, even though sex with children is against the law in Afghanistan, the practice is culturally accepted and that the Canadian forces “should not get involved in what should be seen as a ‘cultural’ issue.”
Makes you wonder what other “cultural” issues involving Afghan security forces that the Western occupiers might not want to get involved in. Perhaps the oppression of women? That’s certainly part of the culture. How about bribery and extortion? Based on the evidence–that the police in Afghanistan are a wholly corrupt entity, and that the army is not much better–arguing that corruption is “culturally acceptable” would be easy to do. How about drug dealing? Again, that appears to be quite the culture in Afghanistan.
Kudos to the Canadian grunts, MPs and chaplins who found the sexual abuse of children more than they could stomach, and who brought their concerns to public attention at home in Canada when their own commanders sought to cover it up.
It makes me wonder, though, why here in the hyper-moralizing US, we haven’t heard a peep from our troops or their chaplins about similar behavior by Afghan forces on US-run bases. Remember, we’re talking about a US military that still says if you admit to being homosexual, you have to quit the service or be tossed out, and yet nobody’s raising a fuss about Afghan troops routinely raping young boys behind the barracks?
It’s hard, after all, to believe that a practice so common on a Canadian base that it provoked such outrage among Canadian soldiers is not also occurring elsewhere.
This leaves us with two possiblities:

1. US soldiers and marines are just not as willing to go outside the chain of command and go public with their complaints, or
2. The US media are not interested in investigating this kind of story. It involves only Afghans, and who cares about Afghans? What American journalism covers is Americans. (Remember the big spate of stories about the sex escapades of guards at the US embassy in Kabul?)

I’d say it’s probably a combination of the two.
At any rate, the picture painted of Afghanistan’s army and police in the Ottawa Citizen article does not bode well for any plan that hinges on their taking over from US and ISAF troops any time soon…or for the fate of young children of Afghanistan, if and when they do.

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/204228-1-2-3-What-Are-We-Fighting-For-in-Afghanistan-This-

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Global Research, March 5, 2010

Vedomosti

MOSCOW — The approval of a new United States nuclear doctrine has been postponed for another month. The military had taken almost a year to prepare it. The initial wording, in which America renounces any pre-emptive strike, avowing instead to use nuclear weapons only in response to attack, was rejected by President Barack Obama.

The draft makes it clear that the emphasis is on non-nuclear weapons, including missile defense in the Persian Gulf in direct proximity to Iran. The Quadrennial Defense Review, unveiled last month, provides for the development of a new class of non-nuclear missiles capable of reaching a target anywhere in the world in less than an hour.

According to Kommersant’s sources, this type of defense system, called "Prompt Global Strike", would be deployed on U.S. territory. Launch sites would be open to international inspectors, including those from Russia, who would be able to see that the missiles carry no nuclear warheads. As conceived by the U.S. military, such weapons would be able to deliver a massive strike on Al-Qaeda positions in Afghanistan or prevent the launch of a North Korean missile.

Pentagon supporters of this new defense system are confident that these missiles will achieve the same effect as nuclear weapons without escalating conventional warfare into a full-scale nuclear war. As a result, the U.S. administration is going to suggest a new concept of deterrence which allows states developing various kinds of weapons of mass destruction, ranging from chemical to bacteriological, to be held in check, without resorting to nuclear weapons.

But the fundamental point that President Obama must answer as he presents the final version of the doctrine is: why America needs nuclear weapons? Experts think this is far from being an idle question. Daryl Kimball, director of the Arms Control Association, says any suggestion that deterring a nuclear attack is the main objective of the U.S. nuclear arsenal signals there are also other objectives. And this, he adds, does not tally well with the speech made by President Obama in Prague a year ago where he proposed a plan for the global destruction of nuclear weapons.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17949

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The COTO Report goes down under to interview Max Igan about his films, his book, current events and the New World Order
Special thanks to David Dees for his fantastic illustrations

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