Haiti Newslinks 29-30 January, 2010

January 30, 2010Leave a comment

30 January, 2010

Haiti Moves, Haltingly, to Reopen Schools
Wall Street Journal
PORT-AU-PRINCE—Haiti will reopen some of the country’s schools Monday for the first time since the Jan. 12 earthquake, but few are in the capital or other …
online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704343104575033542998064122.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsThird

Performers Plan More Efforts for Haiti
New York Times
Entertainment personalities are continuing their efforts to raise awareness and money for the earthquake relief effort in Haiti. On Thursday, BET Networks …
www.nytimes.com/2010/01/30/arts/television/30arts-PERFORMERSPL_BRF.html

Cost Dispute Halts Airlift of Injured Haiti Quake Victims
New York Times
By SHAILA DEWAN MIAMI — The United States has suspended its medical evacuations of critically injured Haitian earthquake victims until a dispute over who …
www.nytimes.com/2010/01/30/us/30airlift.html

UN Group Urges $700 Million Investment in Haitian Agriculture
Bloomberg
29 (Bloomberg) — An investment plan to restore Haiti’s agriculture industry and secure food production will require $700 million in international aid, …
www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=at_vFIabEsso

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Housmans Radical Books, London: February 2010 Events Newsletter

January 30, 2010Leave a comment

29 January, 2010 — Housmans Books

NEWS
1. Office space to rent below Housmans
2. Guest book recommendations
3: Housmans blog

EVENTS
4. War Resisters’ International present: ‘Antimilitarism In Latin America’
5. ‘Possibilities for the Post-Capitalist Era’ with Harry Shutt
6. ‘This Room in the Sunlight’ with Bernard Kops:
7. Last Hours Collective present: ‘Excessive Force – policing in Britain’
8. No Sweat Forum – Haiti Earthquake
9. ‘Inside Quatro: Uncovering the Exile History of the ANC and SWAPO’ with Paul Trewhela
10. Future events

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS
11. Harry Shutt Picks Five

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The US game in Latin America By Mark Weisbrot

January 30, 2010Leave a comment

29 January, 2010 — Comment is free – guardian.co.uk

US interference in the politics of Haiti and Honduras is only the latest example of its long-term manipulations in Latin America

When I write about US foreign policy in places such as Haiti or Honduras, I often get responses from people who find it difficult to believe that the US government would care enough about these countries to try and control or topple their governments. These are small, poor countries with little in the way of resources or markets. Why should Washington policymakers care who runs them?

Unfortunately they do care. A lot. They care enough about Haiti to have overthrown the elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide not once, but twice. The first time, in 1991, it was done covertly. We only found out after the fact that the people who led the coup were paid by the US Central Intelligence Agency. And then Emmanuel Constant, the leader of the most notorious death squad there – which killed thousands of Aristide’s supporters after the coup – told CBS News that he, too, was funded by the CIA.

In 2004, the US involvement in the coup was much more open. Washington led a cut-off of almost all international aid for four years, making the government’s collapse inevitable. As the New York Times reported, while the US state department was telling Aristide that he had to reach an agreement with the political opposition (funded with millions of US taxpayers’ dollars), the International Republican Institute was telling the opposition not to settle.

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Statement on Haiti adoptions from Adoptees of Color

January 30, 2010Leave a comment

25 January, 2010 — Adoptees of Color

This statement reflects the position of an international community of adoptees of color who wish to pose a critical intervention in the discourse and actions affecting the child victims of the recent earthquake in Haiti. We are domestic and international adoptees with many years of research and both personal and professional experience in adoption studies and activism. We are a community of scholars, activists, professors, artists, lawyers, social workers and health care workers who speak with the knowledge that North Americans and Europeans are lining up to adopt the “orphaned children” of the Haitian earthquake, and who feel compelled to voice our opinion about what it means to be “saved” or “rescued” through adoption.

We understand that in a time of crisis there is a tendency to want to act quickly to support those considered the most vulnerable and directly affected, including children. However, we urge caution in determining how best to help. We have arrived at a time when the licenses of adoption agencies in various countries are being reviewed for the widespread practice of misrepresenting the social histories of children. There is evidence of the production of documents stating that a child is “available for adoption” based on a legal “paper” and not literal orphaning as seen in recent cases of intercountry adoption of children from Malawi, Guatemala, South Korea and China. We bear testimony to the ways in which the intercountry adoption industry has profited from and reinforced neo-liberal structural adjustment policies, aid dependency, population control policies, unsustainable development, corruption, and child trafficking.

For more than fifty years “orphaned children” have been shipped from areas of war, natural disasters, and poverty to supposedly better lives in Europe and North America. Our adoptions from Vietnam, South Korea, Guatemala and many other countries are no different from what is happening to the children of Haiti today. Like us, these “disaster orphans” will grow into adulthood and begin to grasp the magnitude of the abuse, fraud, negligence, suffering, and deprivation of human rights involved in their displacements.

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