I haven't been following it much, for there is always the undercurrent in these things that tells us what we see -- or are allowed to see -- is only a superficial gloss on something much more deep-seated. I would not take anyone's word for anything about the "Revolution" in Tunisia.
What I find interesting, though, is the attempt to inject WikiLeaks into the action, on the basis of some cables that came from somewhere, which purport to show that the US State Department knew that Tunisia was ruled by a kleptocracy and that things would have to change.
Nobody knows exactly where the cables came from, whether they are authentic, or anything about them, but there they were being touted by all sorts of mainstream media (Business Week, Foreign Policy, and... of course... Andrew Sullivan at the Atlantic) and you've just got to wonder.
I've never thought that things are what they seem to be with WikiLeaks, but at the same time, it's all so slippery and slimy, I don't know how anyone can untangle it. It is certainly convenient to think that Revolutions can be triggered by the revelations in the WikiLeaks docs, but the problem with that notion is that at this time, WikiLeaks isn't releasing the State Department docs until after they have been vetted and scrubbed by its Media Partners and the State Department. In other words, the State Department doc dump is being performed strictly by the Rules of the Game, and nothing that makes it into the public domain is anything except what the Powers That Be want.
Furthermore, back in December, Julian gave an interview to ABC News -- which he overly dramatically flounced out of after being questioned about the Sex Crimes allegations in Sweden, at the very end of a long interview (ed note: obviously a set up) -- in which he stated that by golly, WikiLeaks was working with a number of smaller news organizations to get the State Department docs out more quickly. Then, in January, he repeated this claim. There's been no evidence of it, however. What there has been, at least according to some reports, is the acquisition of WikiLeaks leaks, in whole or in part, by (apparently) unauthorized media outlets. What they do with them remains to be seen.
Meanwhile back in Tunisia, it seems obvious, to the extent anything is "obvious" about what's going on there, that the People have known full well of the corruption and self-dealing at the top, and the issue for them has always been about the obscene levels of exploitation and oppression they have been under. There is no sign yet that that's going to change. This appears to be yet another Neo-Liberal coup, not a Revolution at all, which will have the effect of tightening the screws.
How convenient.
And have you heard? Baby Doc has returned to Haiti from his luxury-exile in Paris. I wonder if Bill or Hillary gave him a call...
A year after the earthquake, Haitians are still in desperate straits: almost no rebuilding, a dreadful cholera epidemic that was not prepared for or anticipated in advance, a non-functional central government, a million residents still under tents and tarps, and more than 10,000 NGOs delivering "aid" -- but every one of them protecting their turf and their funding first and foremost.
What's happened in Haiti since the earthquake is a tragedy for the Haitians, and a shame for the world community that pledged so much assistance to rebuild.
What's happened is a descent into Modern Medievalism.
There is no central government in Haiti except in the abstract, much as was the case in Europe during the Dark Ages; one doesn't even know who the president might be, and it hardly matters given the fact that the "government" -- such as it is -- is essentially non-functional having suffered so many losses during the earthquake.
Consequently, a proliferation of NGOs are filling a vacuum of authority and power, but only partially, and only to the extent they are protecting their turf and their funding. They are doing as little as possible for and with the Haitian people, while they primarily look after their own interests and affairs in competition with all the other NGOs.
There is no coordination of effort, no common interest, no more than minimal "service" to the Haitian People. It is private interest every step of the way, and that is a huge reason why there is no progress at all. "Oh, but it could be so much worse without us!" cry the NGOs. Maybe, maybe not. But the Haitians are rightly fed up with the state of affairs they are subject to, and given some of the violent incidents in response to the cholera epidemic especially, they are on the verge of general insurrection.
This is pretty much what everyone's future will look like when government is reduced to an abstraction and competing private interests are left to their own devices. Each NGO becomes a kind of independent fief, struggling with all the others, using the People as pawns, providing them little or nothing, but always claiming that their efforts have kept things from getting worse.
Haiti should be a disturbing lesson for all of us, but strangely, the most obvious lessons are lost on most Americans.
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lea-p adds links to a Film@11tv documentary "Where did the money go?" to help round out the picture. Four of five episodes are on line now, the fifth and final episode should be posted soon.
Lots of media coverage of the six month "anniversary" of the earthquake that devastated Haiti in January. Lots of notice that essentially nothing has been done, that the rubble still festers in Port-au-Prince, that the people have had little aid, that they struggle on bravely regardless, that the government continues to be ineffective and corrupt, that the donors haven't delivered, that "Makeshift" is the word, that there is still no shelter for most of the dispossessed survivors apart from that which they stitch and cobble together themselves from sticks and blankets and baling wire that they have pulled out of the rubble.
And there's this: the money, such as it is, that is given for Haiti Relief mostly goes to fund the NGOs that squabble endlessly among themselves to provide the aid; only there's just enough money to fund inadequate NGO staffs, and nothing is available for the People.
So it is in many other lands as well, it's not just Haiti. Far from it. Every now and then, we'll see a news report to the effect that $XX billions of dollars have been allocated and spent for "aid" in Afghanistan since the American overthrow of the Taliban government in 2001. And there is nothing to show for it. Nothing, because most of the money has gone to pay for "training and upkeep" of Afghan "security forces." And all the rest has gone to pay for the inadequate staffs of the proliferation of NGOs that rushed into Afghanistan to provide "aid." But there is no money left to aid the People. Everything goes for "security" and NGO staff salaries.
And every now and then some food or medical supplies is delivered for the suffering People, but not too often or too much, you know, we wouldn't want them to become dependent.
Oh no, wouldn't want that.
But what there isn't is rebuilding of cities or infrastructure for the benefit of the People. That just isn't done. There isn't enough money, you see, for anything like that on the one hand, and it's so very difficult to do that on the other. So, the NGOs say, "We do the best we can."
Sure.
Amy Goodman spent an hour interviewing Sean Penn the other day at the "IDP" Camp he runs (apparently single-handedly, in true White God fashion -- h/t Matt Taibbi) in Port-au-Prince. And it drove me nuts.
Amy didn't want to attack him, so she didn't, but at the same time, she asked some pretty hard questions, "Why hasn't anything changed? What happens to all the money? What is the point of all these NGOs when the people are still in such misery?" And he had no answer. Well, he did, but it was basically a defense of the System -- which doesn't provide aid -- and the great work all the NGOs are doing, and even if the new camps are crappy, everybody knew that they would be, so what's the problem?
It was aggravating as hell.
And it is the standard bullshit you hear from the proliferating NGO and NPO community globally. They can't get anything done to actually improve the lives of more than a handful of clients or participants. They don't have enough resources. They never do. No matter how much they have or how critical the need, they simply have too many other interests, needs, and concerns -- and there's too much squabbling between them -- to actually take care of the problems they are ostensibly organized to handle.
Watch the Democracy Now! interview with Sean Penn if you can. I actually couldn't sit through it all. He was driving me absolutely nuts with his excuses and dodginess.
Amy does get into why reconstruction is stalled and aid is so screwed up in Haiti in other segments, though what to do about it is not, ever, made clear.
The long suffering People of Haiti are the only real heroes in all of this.
And there are those who will defend the lack of progress and counter that the suffering People are getting clean water and food aid, so what's the problem? Medical teams did heroic work and many are still on scene, so what's the problem? The Haitians are resourceful and eventually they will have to fend for themselves anyway, so what's the problem?
The problem is that most of the aid funding goes to pay for staffs and equipment for organizations that really have no intention to do much more than perpetuate themselves.
The continuing mess being made of the Haitian Earthquake Relief effort does give rise to the question of whether the aid agencies are deliberately slowing and refusing adequate levels of aid to the people. My post yesterday about the decision by the Big Aid Agencies that the Haitians will not receive tents as temporary shelter but that at best households in Port-Au-Prince will receive one 12X18 tarp -- if they are lucky, before the rainy season arrives -- just adds to the overall despair at the continuing nightmare there. Of course many of the decisions the Bigs have been making during the catastrophe and the aftermath, from the restrictions on food and water aid to the precipitous removal of rescue teams, to the overweening interest in "security" above all, point to policy decisions that should give us all pause.
As I said in an earlier post, "We are all Haitians now." If these things are not deliberate policy decisions but are merely accidents attributable to the scale and scope of the disaster, then we have another realization staring us in the face:
No government or agency or coalition or consortium of them anywhere in the world is even remotely prepared for or capable of handling emergency response and continuing aid on behalf of survivors of a serious mass-casualty disaster of any kind. They simply can't do it.
It's not, apparently, for lack of will on the part of individuals, either. It seems to be a massive and global institutional failure -- or collective decision to fail -- that cannot be addressed solely by individuals attempting to do their best under the circumstances.
In the case of Haiti, for example, there is an abundance of aid supplies but there has been a deliberate withholding of distribution, with every imaginable excuse offered, from the lack of cleared roads (though the Native survivors were able to get around pretty well, despite conditions) to the supposed lack of security. The Haitians organized themselves into survivor communities, chose their own community leaders and spokespeople, and the aid agencies refused to speak with them, refused to coordinate with them, and refused to deliver aid supplies to these communities. That had to have been a policy decision at the top of the aid agency hierarchy, and one can see why it might occur, even in the face of such grotesque suffering, because of the overriding desire to legitimate and prop up the nearly non-existent and non-functional Preval government through which the World Community (such as it is) has decided to work, a government installed by force on the Haitian people by that same World Community when the popular leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was overthrown -- again -- by the Bush White House. Thus, even if thousands or hundreds of thousands, or ultimately millions of Haitians suffer needlessly, at least the tottering (and imposed) "government" has been propped up, and that's the important thing.
Apparently it's the most important thing, the only truly important thing.
And the question is, how much longer will the People endure this radicalism at the top?
Good God in Heaven, what is the matter with these people?
Today it is being widely reported that Haitian Relief Agencies have decided that the hundreds of thousands of homeless households in Haiti following the earthquake shall not receive tents as temporary shelter. No, instead, if they are lucky, each displaced household will receive one, count it, one tarp. If they are lucky.
Many of the aid agencies, especially the big ones, have made a mockery of the very idea of disaster assistance with their near total failure to provide any such thing to survivors of the Haitian earthquake that took place over a month ago now. They may have raised hundreds of millions of dollars for relief, but they are so terribly frightened of the Negroes and all of their VooDoo and whatnot, and they are so incapable of even speaking with the Natives to coordinate aid deliveries, and they are so fretful of "security", that hundreds of thousands of Haitians have received nothing at all from the stores and stockpiles of relief supplies piled up (and probably rotting) at the Port-Au-Prince airport, and many never will receive anything at the rate things are going.
Now, word goes out that the survivors are not to receive tents as a matter of policy.
Why, you may ask?
Well, of course, "they're too big, too costly, and too inefficient, aid groups say." Isn't that special. Silly me. I should have known. "Besides, they are bulky and don't last long enough to justify their cost, the aid community has decided." Thank goodness they are thinking these things through.
Food is perishable. Water gets spilled. Health care is expensive.
Why do anything? It's inconvenient anyway. Why not just let the Haitians take care of their own selves?
But never fear:
"-By May 1, one plastic tarp will be given to each of about 250,000 displaced families." So there's that.
And then?
"-Transitional shelters of 18 square meters (194 square feet), with corrugated iron roofs, will then be built. They will have earthquake-and storm-resistant frames of timber or steel and are supposed to last for three years."
Wonderful.
How bout a fucking tent in the meantime? And maybe some food. How about some water? Hay, maybe even some medical care? Ya think?
The teeth gnashing and garment rending spectacle on the so-called "left" over the Coakley-Brown Thing in Massachusetts is mostly focused either on scapegoating political personalities in the White House (Emanuel, of course, and Axelrod) and/or Massachusetts (the Dem candidate herself comes to mind, hmmm?), or on dissecting and blaming the poor "messaging" -- ie: advertising and presentation of The Message on the TeeVee -- of Dems in general and Coakley in particular.
When people point out that, "No, the problem is really the POLICIES coming out of the White House and the Dem Party apparat. People HATE them," the wall of blank stares goes up among the Important Dems or the would-be Important Dems, and accusations of being a Republican plant, or for God's sake, a Palinite arise.
In other words, you can't say anything about the Policies of this regime without getting lynched for being a Republican, because the only criticisms of the Policies of this regime are apparently Republican criticisms.
Dems either ignore the policies and wonder where the message is, or they love the policies and wonder, bewildered, what happened to the message?
Bernays, you see. With the right message, apparently, people will buy anything.
The POLICIES of this White House have been straightforward Neo-Liberal economic prescriptions, and straightforward Neo-Conservative foreign policy prescriptions, with a somewhat more human face.
PEOPLE HATE THESE POLICIES. It's the policies. It's not the "message." What's so hard to understand?
The domestic economy is in tatters, has been for some time now, and all the prescriptions coming out of the White House so far have been straightforward Neo-Liberal policies, providing essentially unlimited backstopping to the top of the private sector (ie: the Banksters and the Financial Sector in general) and forcing all the costs onto the vanishing middle and the expanding lower classes.
The POLICY of the White House is to do nothing to directly increase employment, for example. That has the desired effect of keeping unemployment rates high. Which has the multiple desired effect of driving down wages, benefits, and living standards for the vast majority of Americans. Their costs stay the same -- or even increase -- and they get no debt relief (except the extremely costly option of bankruptcy, which in many cases will leave them still in debt for even more than when they filed!); their incomes are cut significantly, their debt and tax load increases, and it's all a matter of POLICY. Is it any wonder people are pissed? Of course it isn't, and the White House knows it. Still they do nothing to change their policies.
They do nothing to provide a backstop to the deterioration of conditions in lower down in the private sector, either. Small business is vanishing from this country because small business people and independent operators don't have the money and they can't get the money to sustain "business." It's all going to the top of the financial pyramid and to the proliferating Imperial wars of aggression. It's POLICY that it be so. This is White House policy, eagerly enabled and abetted by the Congress, which is as thoroughly in thrall to the Corporatists as the White House is.
It's not about MESSAGE. It's about WHAT THE GOVERNMENT IS DOING.
And it ain't doing jackshit for most people, that's a fact.
The HCR debacle is just icing on the cake.
This is cryingly obvious, even to the White House. They know that the People are upset, and they even seem to know why. But they won't do anything to change their policies from the Neo-Liberal/Neo-Con path they're on.
And I submit that they won't change their policies because simply don't believe the People will do anything to force them to change those policies. I'd go so far as to say they don't believe the People can do anything. "Hah hah, suckers!"
I grieve for Haiti, for example. It tears me up; I become extremely emotional over what I see happening there -- as a matter of POLICY -- but this is standard operating procedure now for disasters, and there is every indication it's going to get worse.
The POLICIES are fairly clear: aid to be delayed and denied as long as necessary to compel "voluntary" evacuation of the disaster zone. Any excuse at all is acceptable, just keep the aid from reaching most of the survivors as long as it takes to get them to leave. Let the vast majority of the injured die; let most of the trapped stay where they are and die. Do good works for public consumption, the rescues, the airlifts, the stockpiling of supplies, the scatter-shot heroism, but do not provide services or supplies in anything like sufficient quantities or more than randomly for most people -- so as to get them to leave. Blame the "debris," the "danger," the "looters," the "anarchy."
Be prepared to force evacuation at the point of a gun if necessary if they won't go voluntarily.
Once the disaster region is cleared, commence partial rebuilding a la New Orleans and parts of Indonesia (among other places) to ensure the comfort and convenience of the Neo-Liberal elites. Period.
Get the picture?
It's not about the message. It's about the failure of Policies to address the catastrophe among the People.
I mean it. We're all Haitians now. Their fate is ours. And if we don't awake and arise -- soon -- it will be too late (it may already be) to "bend" the course of history.
Well, the Coakley/Brown Thing has put something of a cherry on the top of all the horrors lately.
Imagine it. After fifty years -- no, more than fifty years, well more -- of A Kennedy representing Massachusetts in the Senate, some middle-aged still-hunky wingnut dude, beloved by the Teabaggers, will be declaming from the Well of The Senate on his opposition to everything the Kennedys were (supposedly) for.
The World Turned Upside Down.
And there was another big earthquake, though not quite as big as the big one the other day, in Haiti, putting the survivors there into another well-justified panic.
Of course the Teabaggers and their sponsors will take this ball and run with it for all it's worth, it's what they do.
"People are scared of the poor." -- Gen Russel Honore (Ret) to CNN regarding the evacuation of Belgian medical personnel from a makeshift clinic in Port-Au-Prince
I don't have cable teevee, so there is no 24 hour news cycle to keep me in a constant state of agitation and OUTRAGE!!!!!™, but the stories out of Haiti are getting more and more outrageous, even in the print and online versions of the news I do see.
Many times, it's been pointed out that the survivors of the earthquake have no access to food, water, emergency medical attention and care, and that they are doing for themselves what they can while aid pours into the airport and sits there.
It is said to sit there for two reasons: "There's no infrastructure" for transport and distribution of the pallets of supplies, and "There's no security" for those doing the distribution.
In other words, "It's not safe," and "We couldn't get it to Those People anyway."
Huh.
Just like Katrina.
The aid agents, even Our Dauntless Armed Forces, are scared to death of the Natives running wild, and they have no idea how they can possibly get supplies to the survivors anyway, not having clear, smooth access roads and convenient helipads and distribution nodes around the suffering city.
This is disgusting.
But it has become the Status Quo thanks to the "success of the Katrina Exercise" in which the suffering survivors were made to suffer further while political campaigns continued (seeing President Clinton stumping for Coakley in Massachusetts the other day, though he's supposed to be UN Special Envoy to Haiti, more than chapped my gizzard, let me tell you) and everyone who could provide immediate assistance to the survivors was belayed from doing so for Fear of the Native Hordes and what they would do to their rescuers.
"Force Protection" was the most important thing of all, and until that was sorted out completely, no one could either enter or leave New Orleans except under very special circumstances.
For days on end. And many people suffered needlessly and some died because of it.
So it is now in Port-Au-Prince.
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, who led relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina in 2005, said the evacuation of the clinic's medical staff was unforgivable.
"Search and rescue must trump security," Honoré said. "I've never seen anything like this before in my life. They need to man up and get back in there." -- Gen Russel Honore, Ret.
Yes, well, sorry General, the VouDou is gonna getcha if Les Noirs don't do it first. {{{{{{{shudder}}}}}}
Priorities.
And for poor Haiti, the priority appears to be applying even more of Le Doctrine de Choc through fear and neglect because doing anything else is simply outside the parameters of Good Practice.
Peoples of the World arise. This is your fate, too.
My man Chris Floyd details some of the global Corporatist "help" for Haiti over the last couple of decades, a stark tale of perfidy and woe, which of course is now being touted by the International Corporatist Conspiracy (hm, that has a ring to it) as having provided Hope to those poor unfortunate people, Hope that has been severely tested by this earthquake, this latest calamity to hit the west side of the Island of Hispanola, Hope that must be restored as quickly as possible by restoring as much as possible of the Globalist Corporatist infrastructure of exploitation to functionality.
In other words, clean up some of the mess, dispose of the bodies of the dead, and get back to work ("you lazy n-words.")
I watched President Clinton on the NewsHour last night appealing for Americans to send Help For Haiti, and at times, it seemed that he was pretending to be King of Haiti, referring to it and its suffering people as "we" repeatedly, and then, strangely it seemed, he'd focus on the 150 UN personnel who were trapped under the ruins of the UN Peace-Keeping Headquarters. Over and over again he mentioned them. It's an awful thing, there's no doubt about that, but they're a portion, and a small portion at that, of the dead and wounded in Port Au Prince and its environs. But at times, it seemed they were the only victims of the earthquake he could grasp or imagine, the 150 trapped and presumed dead UN personnel.
But then, it's not so odd after all. President Clinton is Special UN Envoy to Haiti. The UN personnel are there as enforcers of Globalist Corporatist Authority, they are the support structure for the sham-democracy that has been imposed on the Haitians, and they are the first line of defense against the restoration of the Aristide version of Social Democracy in Haiti. Clinton focuses on the UN personnel because it's his job, but more than that, the loss of these personnel is potentially devastating for the Program of Global Corporatist Exploitation. Never mind the Natives lost in the calamity. There were always too many of them anyway. Earthquakes are one way of disposing of the surplus.
One thing that has come up again and again in the news reporting of the situation in Haiti is the belief that there is "no government" in Haiti, and constant fretting that the Natives are running wild in the absence of Law and Order -- that of course can only be imposed upon them by the presence of heavily armed Robo-Airborne Troops and Marines, since the UN mission is out of commission. A startling revelation, however, is that the troops and their commanders don't seem to think the Natives are running wild, and at least at this point, the troops' focus is on humanitarian relief. This seems to come as something of a shock to many news people.
A Haitian is shown in a Boston Globe slide show (bless you, Digby) carrying a bag of corn meal or rice away from the ruins of a supermarket in Port Au Prince, and the Reuters caption says:
A resident loots food from the Caribbean supermarket in downtown Port-au-Prince after a major earthquake hit the Haitian capital, January 14, 2010.
For God's sake, news services can't imagine black folk doing anything but "looting" under the circumstances, so that's what we are told they are doing in taking food from a ruined supermarket in the midst of a calamity when there are no other resources available. It's not "looting." It's survival.
At least many of the commenters on the Boston Globe Haiti slideshow protested the caption. Good for them.
The commonplace notion in the media that there's "no government" in Haiti inadvertently puts to mock the whole theory of Globalist Corporatist installation of a compliant government in such places. The "government" of Haiti, installed and protected by Globalist Corporatist forces and interests, is essentially irrelevant and non-existent as far as the news media is concerned. There are no "services." Police do not patrol. "Order" is not being maintained. Food and water is not being distributed. The trapped are not being rescued. The wounded are not being tended. The dead are not being collected and buried.
The National Palace is in ruins.
Of course the disgusting comments of Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh -- which will not be repeated here nor will they be linked to -- are making all the rounds and causing the usual tumult. Apart from simple minded nastiness, I'm convinced that people like Robertson and Limbaugh vomit up these kinds of comments about other people's misfortunes because of the attention they bring to themselves, as if they'd hawked up a hairball and were very proud to show it off. While others are suffering and dying. To be blunt, they just can't stand the notion that others would get the attention they don't deserve. They hate it so much, they have to interrupt the commiseration going on to show off their vomit stains.
I will say this: in contrast to his right-wing yabbering bretheren, Hugh Hewitt has actually put some thought and concern into how to provide immediate help to injured Hatians: stabilize their condition there, then fly them here for treatment. And send money and help right now.
