admin74
US False Benevolence in Haiti: Failure of Foreign “AID” is Structural
On May 11, 2011, at a House Congressional hearing, USAID talked about the “progress” made in providing safe drinking water and medical care in Haiti. That no infrastructure for sustainable health care, sanitation and clean drinking water has been constructed with the billions collected for the earthquake victims; that the UN imported cholera killing over 5,000 innocent Haitians, leaving 300,000 infected with a foreign disease, did not deter, the administrator of the Agency for International Development(USAID), Rajiv Shah, from reporting at the hearing that major Monsanto-style “progress” had been made in Haiti.
Shah told Chaffetz that more than a million Haitians had access to vaccines, more Haitians had safe drinking water than before the earthquake, and some crop yields have doubled. That’s progress is Monsanto hybrid seeds destroying Haiti’s domestic seed diversity, further depleting Haiti’s soil and the colonization of Haiti’s food and seeds is truly earthquake relief?
That’s progress if buying US goods and services is aid to Haiti?
That’s progress, if for instance, the toxic USAID agribusiness’ fungicides, pesticides, fertilizers, herbicides used to “double crop yields” seeping from Mother Earth and into Haiti’s drinking water, and potentially giving Haitians cancer 10-years from now is progress?
That’s progress if USAID using foreign aid monies to pay big US pharmaceutical businesses for their vaccines products that Haitians will drink down most likely with foul cholera water on empty Clorox-hungry-stomachs is wholesome and healthy?
That’s progress if USAID using the Haiti earthquake and cholera outbreak as an corporate opportunity to solicit more monies to buy their own crony’s antibiotics, dehydration pills or bottled water – leaving no permanently renewable clean water infrastructure in Haiti as usual – equates to Haiti having “more ” sustainable “safe drinking water than before the earthquake?”
That’s progress if the post-earthquake UN contamination of Haiti’s water system, underground water and the Artibonite River which fertilizes Haiti’s breadbasket that feeds the people is also logical evidence of more Haitians having safe drinking water than before the earthquake?”
The USAID Director’s claim that more Haitians have safe drinking water than before the earthquake, is progress if Haiti tarp dwellers drinking untreated brackish Red Cross water in Haiti making them ill is progress. (See Ezili Dantò on: Colonization of Haiti’s food and seeds is not earthquake relief; The Poverty Pimps’ Masturbating on Black Pain: Monsanto joins the pack ; Vision of Plantation Haiti – A White Pearl, Again! ; The Plantation called Haiti: Feudal Pillage Masking as Humanitarian Aid ; Tell The Truth About Haiti Forum with Ezili Dantò of HLLN and, UN responsibility for importing cholera.)
“The cholera outbreak need not have happened. Shows the failure of the international relief effort.” —Ezili Dantò – Haitian cholera epidemic preventable, October 27, 2010
In addition to the USAID progress Rajiv Shah reported has been made in providing safe drinking water and medical care in Haiti, Shah said a new industrial park will create 5,000 jobs.
House Republican, Jason Chaffetz, (R-Utah) publicly slammed the USAID Director for making wildly inaccurate claims of success in Haiti. “The totality of the U.S. response has been pathetic and disappointing,” he said.
USAID Director Rajiv Shah said 10 to 20 percent of the quake rubble had been removed. Chaffetz ripped him apart, said earthquake relief efforts in Haiti have been “pathetic.”
Chaffetz contradicted Shah’s Haiti “success” figures, pointing out that only 5% of the rubble had been removed according to inspector general report.
“That’s not cleaned up. You scooted it over,” said Chaffetz. He introduced a picture of himself in Haiti last March, standing on rubble next to a sign saying the site had been cleared “with funding from the American people.
Chaffetz said USAID’s record wasn’t much better in Iraq and Afghanistan. He pointed to a memorandum to Shah from the agency inspector general that concluded wildly inaccurate claims were made about operations in Iraq.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee told USAID director Rajiv Shah, “You would be fired” if the recovery efforts showed the same results in the United States.
“…This is blatant fraud,” Chaffetz said. (Chaffetz rips US disaster relief efforts |http://bit.ly/kiY8lj).
Recall folks, not too long ago, in a press conference with President-elect Michel Martelly, Mrs. Hillary Clinton, like Shah, also publicly claimed that in the 15 months since the earthquake “there‘s been progress…Twenty percent of the rubble, more than 2 million cubic meters, has been cleared” Further, Clinton, talking about “progress” in Haiti said that since the earthquake “one industrial park has been created to create 20,000 jobs.” Note Clinton said 20,000 jobs were created at the new industrial park, not that 5,000 jobs were created as Shah told Congress yesterday. ( See, Press Release: Remarks With Haitian President-Elect Michel Martelly After Their Meeting http://1.usa.gov/grsp5y).
The US cost Haiti approximately 850,000 agricultural jobs with Clinton/Bush “trade” policy and promises of hundreds of thousands of assembly plant jobs that never came to past, but pushed Haiti farmers off their rural lands. Yet, both Mrs. Clinton and USAID believe there‘s been progress: “One industrial park has been created to create 20,000 jobs.” (See, Rebuilding Haiti – The Sweatshop Hoax – http://bit.ly/a7TtCs ; Haiti and the Aid Racket – http://bit.ly/cuPYdo ; Haiti and the international aid scam – http://bit.ly/h27E2R.)
Inquiring minds wanna know, is this official denial of accountability their incompetence, blatant fraud or, no, no, that’s not it. It’s most likely the corrupt, incompetent Haiti government and peoples making these US foreign aid officials lie like this. No doubt about it. For, as USAID Director Shah told Congress yesterday – “We would have had more success with rubble removal and housing if we had more specific support from our partners and the government of Haiti. We’re not in charge of Haiti. We’re in a bilateral partnership with Government of Haiti.” ( Republicans say aid efforts in Haiti are a failure (AP) – May 11, 2011 | http://bit.ly/lYuCvC )
Of course USAID must speak of “bilateral partnership” with Government of Haiti. It wouldn’t serve USAID’s poverty pimping corporatocracy’s purposes, to show the post-earthquake US/World Bank unilateral control of Haiti and Haiti reconstruction through the Interim Haiti Reconstruction (IHRC) protectorate, nor the billions in donor country funds (37% of $5.3billion) collected and still in Clinton/UN/NGO/World Bank coffers. (We won’t mention the US/international controls on Haiti through visa denials, job incentives, economic and other military-industrial-complex embargoes. (See, for instance, Haiti officials reverse some legislative races challenged by foreign observers , AP, May 11, 2011 – http://wapo.st/iEAiky)
Here’s out-of-view, but ever-present distant shadow in this “aid” and promoting “progress in Haiti” scam. If Haiti is corrupt, its corruption is less than 1 cent per dollar of aid. For less than 1 cent of every dollar of US donor aid goes to the Haiti government. If there’s corruption it is NOT with the government or people of Haiti, but USAID and its NGO subcontractors who divvy up more than 99% of “aid to Haiti.” Americans are not taught the truth about foreign aid to Haiti. In fact, the truth is, 93 percent of USAID aid funds to Haiti go straight back to the U.S. to purchase US goods and services.
American “aid” to Haiti is a scam used for corporations and consultant firms, connected to those in power at USAID, to buy their own company’s goods and services. ”The United States makes sure that 80 cents in every aid dollar is returned to the home country.” It’s called “Tied Aid.
What is called “US aid to Haiti” is mostly corporate welfare to wealthy US corporations and the tiny Haiti oligarchy that act as their neocolonial subcontractors who get the trickled down. That’s why US aid is a failure and doesn’t help Haiti earthquake victims. Poverty pimping, false benevolence and strings-attached “Tied Aid,” is what’s pathetic.
If US “aid” to Haiti were successful, the charitable industry and self-styled “saviors” of Haiti, would not have a gig. Failure is an asset, structurally built into their color-coded policies and disaster capitalism “aid” system. The sooner decent Americans understand this, the quicker these poverty pimps will be booted from their vulture perch and U.S. disaster relief efforts to Katrina and Haiti victims will be more effective. (See, Mark Weisbrot’s “Haiti and the international aid scam : Haiti is often decried for corruption but look at how reconstruction contracting works: it may be legal but it’s still graft” and, HLLN on oversight needed on USAID . )
Ezili Dantò
Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (“HLLN”)
May 11, 2011
See- HLLN Note: US Congress must provide more oversight guidelines on USAID
( Written in 2008 after the 4-back-to-back Haiti storms and promises of “aid” to “reconstruct” Gonaives, Haiti. Billions were collected, Gonaives was not reconstructed, to say the least. Gonaives flood victims like the earthquake victims found little sustainable relief. But the poverty pimps made lots of monies. http://bit.ly/c3EKC1)
********************************************************
Forwarded by Ezili’s Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
********************************************************
A chilling video testimony of brackish Red Cross water in Haiti – Cholera confirmed in Haiti capital. For another compelling testimony on Red Cross delivering filthy water to Haiti victims since the earthquake, view also: How did the Red Cross spend $106 Million Dollars in Haiti: (Ezili Dantò’s note: Amongst some of the testimonies that’s not clearly translated in this most valuable video: a woman standing next to a small child repeating “no, no, no,” points to a water drum with a “Red Cross” sign on it and says that even the water they give is not treated. She explains that she drinks it because she has no money to buy good drinkable water but suffers right now from a stomach ache from drinking the Red Cross’ polluted water.)
***
Background Links:
HLLN Note: US Congress must provide more oversight guidelines on USAID (Written in 2008 after the 4-back-to-back Haiti storms and promises of “aid” to “reconstruct” Gonaives, Haiti. Billions were collected, Gonaives was not reconstructed, to say the least. Gonaives flood victims like the earthquake victims found little sustainable relief. But the poverty pimps made lots of monies. http://bit.ly/c3EKC1)
Haiti and the international aid scam
by Mark Weisbrot, http://bit.ly/h27E2R
Haiti and the Aid Racket
by Ashley Smith http://bit.ly/cuPYdo
Rebuilding Haiti – The Sweatshop Hoax
by David L. Wilson http://bit.ly/a7TtCs
***
Tags: Ezili Dantò, foreign aid, HLLN, NGO charity false benevolence, tied aid, US false benevolence
