busybody..
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Jul 28, 2002
- Posts
- 149,503
US Military Blocks Relief Efforts In Haiti
January 22nd, 2010
From the World Socialist website:
US military operations block relief efforts in Haiti
By Alex Lantier
21 January 2010
The US military intervention in Haiti, after the January 12 earthquake that killed an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 people, continues to block arrival of critical supplies to the devastated country. Quake victims—including hundreds of thousands of wounded and an estimated three million Haitians made homeless—lack access to food, water, and life-saving medical equipment…
US forces who have taken over the Port-au-Prince airport are denying humanitarian flights permission to land. US helicopters also landed troops yesterday, who took over the ruins of Haiti’s Presidential Palace. Roughly 10,000 US troops will be in place in Haiti in the coming days.
In response to protests by Doctors Without Borders that “hundreds of lives were lost” because one of its flights was denied landing rights at Port-au-Prince, US military spokesman Captain John Kirby said: “It’s a question of physics. The airport is the only way in, it has only one runway, and there are literally hundreds of flights trying to make it in.”
Publicly, US officials are taking the absurd position that they do not know the contents of humanitarian aid flights and cannot decide whether they deserve priority to land. Citing discussions with US General Ken Keen, commanding operations in Haiti, the Washington Post wrote, “if an air traffic controller doesn’t know what’s on an incoming plane, then he doesn’t know what priority to give it.” Apparently, priority goes to US military flights. Keen said: “If the young airman [controlling air traffic] has three planes coming in and he knows what’s on one of them, he’s going to land that one.”
Doctors Without Borders issued a statement yesterday protesting the US military’s continuing refusal to allow its planes to land at the Port-au-Prince airport. It quoted Loris De Filippi, the coordinator at Choscal hospital in the Cité Soleil neighborhood of Port-au-Prince: “they are begging us there in front of the hospital. It’s a very unacceptable situation. What we are trying to do is to expand our capacity to answer these calls. But we need supplies to get to the airport—and we don’t know why the planes are being redirected.”
Joint UN-US efforts to deliver food and water to the millions of homeless Haitians are grossly insufficient. Nancy Exilos, of the UN’s World Food Program, said: “We go to a site, where the first assessment is there are 100 people [in need of help]. We bring enough [supplies] for 100 people but when we arrive we find there are 2,000 people.” The UN was hoping to provide water and food for 200,000 people in Haiti yesterday…
The US build-up is proceeding, citing as justification fears of possible “looting” by Haitians desperate for food and water—with the New York Times writing that “the threat of mass looting seems to increase by the day.” However, there have been no reports of violence against aid personnel. In fact, General Keen commented, “The level of violence we see now is below pre-earthquake levels.”
Teams of Cuban doctors have traveled to Haiti and are treating earthquake victims without armed guards.
US forces nonetheless refuse to move shipments out of the airport without massive guards, further delaying rescue attempts. Gilberto Castro, emergency response director of transport company Deutsche Post DHL, told the Wall Street Journal: “Twenty containers go out, but you have to have about 100 heavily armed soldiers” to escort them.
The most tragic costs of US military interference with relief efforts will be borne by the Haitian masses. Debarati Guha-Sapir, professor of epidemiology at the University of Louvain in Belgium, said that normally most earthquake deaths take place in the 2 days after an earthquake. However, she added: “Haiti, I think, is going to be different. They will not die simply because there is no care. … They will die of lack of surgical care. They will die of simple trauma that in almost any other country would not lead to death.” …
There are reports of growing anger at the US puppet regime led by President René Préval, who was installed through a coup against elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. The Times of London wrote: “Haitians complain that their government has been silent. President Préval is himself camped out at the airport … and aid distribution has been either totally absent or at best haphazard.” It noted that water bottles sell for $6 on the black market in Port-au-Prince.
Since it is clear that our efforts to help in Haiti are being using as a propaganda tool against us, we must stop our relief operations immediately.
After all, isn’t that the logic behind shutting down the detainee facility at Guantanamo?
January 22nd, 2010
From the World Socialist website:
US military operations block relief efforts in Haiti
By Alex Lantier
21 January 2010
The US military intervention in Haiti, after the January 12 earthquake that killed an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 people, continues to block arrival of critical supplies to the devastated country. Quake victims—including hundreds of thousands of wounded and an estimated three million Haitians made homeless—lack access to food, water, and life-saving medical equipment…
US forces who have taken over the Port-au-Prince airport are denying humanitarian flights permission to land. US helicopters also landed troops yesterday, who took over the ruins of Haiti’s Presidential Palace. Roughly 10,000 US troops will be in place in Haiti in the coming days.
In response to protests by Doctors Without Borders that “hundreds of lives were lost” because one of its flights was denied landing rights at Port-au-Prince, US military spokesman Captain John Kirby said: “It’s a question of physics. The airport is the only way in, it has only one runway, and there are literally hundreds of flights trying to make it in.”
Publicly, US officials are taking the absurd position that they do not know the contents of humanitarian aid flights and cannot decide whether they deserve priority to land. Citing discussions with US General Ken Keen, commanding operations in Haiti, the Washington Post wrote, “if an air traffic controller doesn’t know what’s on an incoming plane, then he doesn’t know what priority to give it.” Apparently, priority goes to US military flights. Keen said: “If the young airman [controlling air traffic] has three planes coming in and he knows what’s on one of them, he’s going to land that one.”
Doctors Without Borders issued a statement yesterday protesting the US military’s continuing refusal to allow its planes to land at the Port-au-Prince airport. It quoted Loris De Filippi, the coordinator at Choscal hospital in the Cité Soleil neighborhood of Port-au-Prince: “they are begging us there in front of the hospital. It’s a very unacceptable situation. What we are trying to do is to expand our capacity to answer these calls. But we need supplies to get to the airport—and we don’t know why the planes are being redirected.”
Joint UN-US efforts to deliver food and water to the millions of homeless Haitians are grossly insufficient. Nancy Exilos, of the UN’s World Food Program, said: “We go to a site, where the first assessment is there are 100 people [in need of help]. We bring enough [supplies] for 100 people but when we arrive we find there are 2,000 people.” The UN was hoping to provide water and food for 200,000 people in Haiti yesterday…
The US build-up is proceeding, citing as justification fears of possible “looting” by Haitians desperate for food and water—with the New York Times writing that “the threat of mass looting seems to increase by the day.” However, there have been no reports of violence against aid personnel. In fact, General Keen commented, “The level of violence we see now is below pre-earthquake levels.”
Teams of Cuban doctors have traveled to Haiti and are treating earthquake victims without armed guards.
US forces nonetheless refuse to move shipments out of the airport without massive guards, further delaying rescue attempts. Gilberto Castro, emergency response director of transport company Deutsche Post DHL, told the Wall Street Journal: “Twenty containers go out, but you have to have about 100 heavily armed soldiers” to escort them.
The most tragic costs of US military interference with relief efforts will be borne by the Haitian masses. Debarati Guha-Sapir, professor of epidemiology at the University of Louvain in Belgium, said that normally most earthquake deaths take place in the 2 days after an earthquake. However, she added: “Haiti, I think, is going to be different. They will not die simply because there is no care. … They will die of lack of surgical care. They will die of simple trauma that in almost any other country would not lead to death.” …
There are reports of growing anger at the US puppet regime led by President René Préval, who was installed through a coup against elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. The Times of London wrote: “Haitians complain that their government has been silent. President Préval is himself camped out at the airport … and aid distribution has been either totally absent or at best haphazard.” It noted that water bottles sell for $6 on the black market in Port-au-Prince.
Since it is clear that our efforts to help in Haiti are being using as a propaganda tool against us, we must stop our relief operations immediately.
After all, isn’t that the logic behind shutting down the detainee facility at Guantanamo?
