TRUCKERS MAKE HISTORY IN CANADA Just a short video.
Israeli Convoy Prepping — Join us
Imagine that. They are following Canadians for a change. February 9th, 2022. If the citizens of Isreal ever find out the truth, the whole truth about what their government has been doing to them for years, ever since they day they were born. Their would be a revolution in Israel like their government has never seen. They even experimented on children. Jewish children. They radiated them as a science experiment. The Israeli government did everything imaginable, to have the story wiped out. As a matter of fact they Israeli government has tried to wipe out all history that would wake them up to reality. Their government did sell them all out to Pfizer now didn’t they? Their own government, turned the entire country in a massive lab and guess, who all the guinea pigs are? Every citizen of Israel. And they trust their government. WHY? Israeli’s have been indoctrinated and lied to for years. They have been isolated from the truth. Any truth that might be out there has been wiped out. The government make bloody sure of that. They even managed to get the people of Israel to help them do it. Oh yes I know what they have done and how they do it. Long, Long story on that one. It has only been happening, for what, 70 years. Maybe even longer. Yes now that I think about it, longer much longer. They have been taught to hate with a passion. The government has done that to them all. It starts from the day they are born. Maybe finding out their own government is trying to kill off as many as they can, might wake them up. I will not hold my breath on that one.
A few things about, what I said above. Took me a bit to find that in the archives. I thought it might be important. History always is.
Zionists Poisoned/Radiated 100,000 Sefardi Jewish Children
Way, way, down at the bottom you will find that story. Of course you have to climb down the bean stalk, to find the truth. So how many are brave enough to climb down that bean stalk? History is something that should never be hidden for people. Over 8 years ago this came out. It was kept hidden for a very long time. How many people actually know is a mystery. A study from the early 1950s found X-ray treatment effective in almost all cases of ringworm.
The documented dosages given to the Israeli children were similar to (if not less than) that administered to children treated for ringworm at New York University Hospital between 1940 and 1959.Oh Ya, the US did it too. The US paid Israel to experiment on Jewish children. In fact, the treatment in Israel was the same that was used elsewhere in the world. Oh my. How many know that? Oh well better late then never. It reminds me of all the MK Ultra experiments. They were not isolated to the US either.
That of course was a lie they were told. That is not how you treat ringworm. Any farmer with a single brain cell could tell you that. I advise keeping a copy of everything on that page in a file somewhere. I do. You should too. All this history just might vanish. It is like the Never Ending Story when the Nothingness takes over. It is just like that. It has been that way for a very long time. Things just vanish. Censorship is not a new thing. It has been going on for as far back as I can remember. It existed during the world wars. So my parents and grandparents told me. They were alive and well during those times. They wanted me to know the truth, not the lies the main stream media, told them, others and you. Imagine that, nothing has changed in all those years. They have always used the press, to lie for them. How shocking. Anyone ever notice the similarity between what happened to the Aboriginals getting small pox and Jewish people getting typhus. Bedbugs and lice. Do you know WHY? Germ warfare, is pretty old you know. Long story there too. Just scratching my head????? You will too.
Convoy to DC – Live With Grassroots Organizers February 3rd, 2022.
The facebook one will be taken down. they are making things vanish. Not new of course. youtubeis also starting to censor. Never keep all your eggs in one basket. To everyone one out there rescue the videos before they vanish. The Nothingness is about to take over again. They did that with Anti War stuff too. Very old this vanishing act of theirs is. Very Old indeed.
Check out the comment section. There is a lot of information there. Like the Alaskan convoy for example. It also has links to all the other posts on the convoys.
They went after a very old man as well. That link is in the comments, in the above link. Look for OTTAWA POLICE – BULLY TACTICS – CRIMINAL SENIOR ABUSE
Freedom Convoy Preemptive SOS Press Conference Feb7 2022
CALGARY POLICE OFFICER STANDS UP
CALLS OUT TRUDEAU
A major Thank You to all the people, who left comments. Keep them coming. You find things, I don’t. If we work together we might get it all.
There was more then one of these in that convoy. If I see any military being used to harm any civilian of their own country they can be charged with Treason. Remember that. Now if I saw this with Freedom flags and or F*Trudeau flags on them, then and then only will I know, you are doing the job, you were sworn to do. Remember your oath boys and girls. Tax payers pay your wages. You work for the civilians not the tyranical governments. You serve the people of your country. It is your duty above all duties to protect the citizens of your country. To other wise is to become a criminal, a traitor and in some cases, could make you a murderer. So lets not go there. Protect the people, not the government, who has been using you a cannon fodder for years on end. Used to steal oil and resources from other countries, is all you have done. They used you all. They create poverty on purpose so poor people join the military. If you die they do not care. They never have. History tells us that. They are the many of the same people behind the fake pandemic.
Yes poverty is created on purpose, by governments. Look at how many have become homeless due to this fake pandemic. Just another way to recruit cannon fodder for their new up coming wars. Oh yes they want more wars. All based on lies of course. Nothing new there. I see it coming. So as they say dress for succes not mass murder. One would think, after all these years everyone o the planet would have figured that out.
The UN loves wars. WHO loves fake pandemics. Get with the program people. The UN wants to become the world government. They already have a good head start. I have been watching it all unfold for years. Long Long story. Don’t have time to go into that one. Why do you think some countries are kept in poverty. So they can steal their resources. Oh and imagine the Military world wide, have helped do just that. Then there are the paid Rebels, paid for, with drug money, no less, that pretend to liberate their country. OH the opium, is really good for that one. They were not even from those countries, they were imported from other countries. History is a wonderful thing. They have pulled that stunt so many time over the years I can even remember, how many times anymore. Then of course, they get the press to lie for them. How funny it was one day, when I found a truck, in Syria with California license plates on it. On a main stream media news story. Gee how did that get there I wonder. Oh fake news. I am guessing, the entire thing was cooked up in California by someone. Oops, forgot to take off the plate boys and girls. Just little things, some of us notice.
A new report by Canada’s veterans watchdog says nearly half of the country’s most severely disabled ex-soldiers are not receiving a government allowance intended to compensate them for their physical and mental wounds.
Veterans ombudsman Guy Parent also concluded that those who are receiving the permanent impairment allowance, along with a recently introduced supplement, are only awarded the lowest grade of the benefit.
The criteria used by federal bureaucrats to evaluate disability do not match the intent of the allowance, and the guidelines are too restrictive, the report said.
It doesn’t make sense to set aside cash to deal with a problem and then not spend it, Parent said. “You can flood programs with money, but of you don’t broaden the access, then you haven’t accomplished anything.”
It’s a pattern with the current government, he said, noting how the Conservatives poured funding into the burial program for impoverished ex-soldiers in 2013, but took a year to ease the eligibility criteria so people could actually qualify.
“The evidence presented in the report clearly demonstrates that many severely impaired veterans are either not receiving these benefits or may be receiving them at a grade level that is too low,” the ombudsman said.
“This is unfair and needs to be corrected.”
Investigators could find no evidence that Veterans Affairs adjudicators consider the effect of an enduring injury on an individual’s long-term employment and career prospects, he added.
Findings under review
In a statement, Veteran Affairs Minister Julian Fantino said the findings of the ombudsman’s latest report will be considered as the government prepares its response to a Commons committee review, which has recommended a series of improvements to the legislation governing veterans benefits.
“I have asked officials at Veterans Affairs to ensure that they consider the recommendations found in the veterans ombudsman’s PIA report as well as consult his office in the development of solutions to improve the New Veterans Charter,” Fantino said.
In defending itself against criticism that veterans are being short-changed, the Harper government has been quick to point to the allowance and the supplement as a sign of its generosity.
Fantino told a House of Commons committee last spring that some permanently disabled soldiers receive more than $10,000 per month, but figures from his own department show that only four individuals in the entire country receive that much.
The department went a step further and released a chart at the end of July that shows the maximum benefits soldiers of different ranks could qualify for under existing legislation — a “misleading” display that could raise “false expectations” among veterans, Parent said.
The latest report also noted that when a veteran dies, the spouse automatically loses the allowance, creating financial hardship for the family. Under the old Pension Act system, the widow or widower continued to receive support.
The permanent impairment allowance is a taxable benefit awarded to disabled soldiers in three grade levels as compensation for lost future earnings. The Harper government introduced a supplement to the allowance in 2011.
In some respects, that supplement contributed to a dramatic increase in the number of applications.
According to figures released by Veterans Affairs in June, some 521 ex-soldiers are deemed to be the most critically injured, but the vast majority of them — 92 per cent — receive the lowest grade of allowance support.
The ombudsman’s report estimates Canada has a total of 1,911 severely wounded soldiers, 924 of whom receive no allowance at all.
Ron Cundell, of the web site VeteranVoice.info, said the latest review doesn’t tell ex-soldiers anything they don’t know already.
“It’s a shame,” Cundell said. “The (office of the veterans ombudsman) reports are proving what the veteran community has known for a long time. Veterans Affairs is not treating veterans fairly.”
One of the best comments.
This also applies to most countries not just Canada.
Strange world this western world, give a man a helmet and a rifle, send him to a strange country, feed him some army rations, pay him as little as possible, send him home and try to forget about him, healthy or wounded.
Give a man a helmet and a football, fly him all over your own country, put him up in luxury hotels, feed him steaks and champagne, pay him more then his agent asks for, put his name and picture on the front pages of everything from magazines to breakfast cereal box, if he gets hurt provide him with his own private doctor and full staff, retire him in a mansion with full compensation and staff and talk about him for years at every sports program.
Seems Harper has followed what the US does to it’s Veterans. As little as possible or nothing.
More times then not these young men and women are sent to wars that are fabricated so weapons manufactures, banks, oil companies etc make profit.
ISIS in Syria are freedom fighters, but in Iraq they are the bad guys.
John McCain happens to be friends of those ISIS terrorists.
Easter Ukrainians also held a Referendum, as they also did not want to part of the so called new US/EU controlled Ukraine and now they are being slaughtered. NATO countries are supporting this slaughter. This is beyond imagination, but true.
Inuit go hungry more than any other indigenous group: report
A Nunavut family’s annual groceries cost $19,760, but half of Inuit adults earn less than $20,000
March 27, 2014
A new study released Thursday says people in Nunavut have the highest food insecurity rate for any indigenous population in a developed country at 68 per cent.
A new study released Thursday highlights the fact that people in Nunavut have the highest food insecurity rate for any indigenous population in a developed country at 68 per cent.
The report by the Council of Canadian Academies says 35 per cent of Inuit households in Nunavut do not have enough to eat. It also says 76 per cent of Inuit preschoolers skip meals, while 60 per cent have gone a day without eating.
The report does not present any new data or make any recommendations. Its authors say they hope their document will help develop priorities for the North and “direct northern food security research to priority areas.”
None of this comes as a surprise to Northerners. The alarming data on Inuit child hunger in Nunavut was first published in 2010 following the 2007-2008 Inuit Child Health Survey.
‘Folks in the South, I hope they’re shocked and I hope they’re embarrassed.’- David Natcher.
“That’s the same as it’s always been here,” said Rus Blanchet, who works at the Iqaluit soup kitchen. “Food is more expensive here. There’s nothing anyone can do about that. They have to ship it in by plane and boat.”
The report says the average cost of groceries for a family of four in Nunavut is $19,760 per year while almost half of Inuit adults earn less than $20,000 annually.
David Natcher, a professor at the University of Saskatchewan, contributed to the report.
“For the folks up north, I think they’re going to say ‘Yeah, I’m glad you recognize this,'” he said. “For the folks in the South, I hope they’re shocked and I hope they’re embarrassed.”
Natcher says Canada has the resources and capacity to improve food security in the North.
“The conditions in Nunavut in particular are in many ways dire. We have the resources. We have the capacity to address these issues and we can resolve food insecurity for Northern and Inuit communities.”
The World Health Organization defines food security as existing “when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life.”
The Nunavut Inuit Child Health Survey, 2007-2009, found that 70 per cent of Inuit preschoolers don’t know when they’ll get their next meal. (Aboriginal Food Security in Northern Canada: An Assessment of the State of Knowledge) For more information go to the source. Source
It starts a bit slow but be patient you will find a lot of answers you never thought of before.
It is an older video but definite worth watching.
Do take the time. You may learn a thing or two.
Economist, author, Professor emeritus UMass, Amherst, Richard Wolff, speaks about the current economic crises, its’ roots and what we can do about it.
Filmed by Paul Hubbard at Brown University, Providence RI on 12-2-9
This problem is hitting countries, around the world also.
Dead Dollar Walking: The Truth About Government Debt
On First Nations Chief Theresa Spence’s 20th day of her politically motivated hunger strike, Canadians and politicians answered her plea for solidarity for her cause to secure a meeting between First Nations leaders, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and the Governor General.
The Attawapiskat chief sent Friday a public plea to make Sunday a day of solidarity, asking Canadians to stage protests across the country and petitioning politicians to meet with her in Ottawa, both at 2 p.m.
A number of politicians are starting to make the trek to Victoria Island, Ottawa, where the chief is residing in a teepee, including a 15-member NDP delegation, spokeswoman Valérie Dufour told CBC News.
Originally, 17 NDP MPs were expected, Cheryl Maloney, who self-identified as a Spence supporter and is the president of the Nova Scotia Native Women’s Association, told CBC News. However, two expected MPs experienced weather-related delays.
NDP sends MPs to meet with chief
The group, which will visit the chief at 2 p.m. Sunday, will be led by deputy leader Megan Leslie and Timmins-James Bay MP Charlie Angus.
Chief Spence’s expected visitors:
Carolyn Bennett, Liberal MP, Aboriginal Affairs critic.
Marc Garneau, Liberal MP.
Megan Leslie, NDP MP
Charlie Angus, NDP MP.
Robert Chisholm, NDP MP.
Hoang Mai, NDP MP.
Andrew Cash, NDP MP.
Dan Harris, NDP MP.
Raymond Côté, NDP MP.
Ruth Ellen Brosseau, NDP MP.
François Lapointe, NDP MP.
Craig Scott, NDP MP.
Paul Dewar, NDP MP.
Hélène Laverdière, NDP MP.
Jamie Nicholls, NDP MP.
Mathieu Ravignat, NDP MP.
Wayne Marston, NDP MP.
Denis Blanchette, NDP MP.
Carol Hughes, NDP MP.
Senator Lillian Dyck, Liberal.
Senator Jim Munson, Liberal.
Senator, Mac Harb, Liberal
The NDP has been following Spence’s hunger strike very closely, Dufour said. Since the chief started her hunger strike on Dec. 11, she has subsisted on fish broth and tea. Her condition has been worsening, according to a statement released Friday.
“Her condition continues to weaken every hour,” read the statement.
On Dec. 18, party leader Thomas Mulcair wrote a letter to Harper asking him to meet with Spence.”Please act swiftly to avoid a personal tragedy for Chief Spence,” he wrote.
Now, 20 days into Spence’s hunger strike, the NDP is “beginning to be very worried,” said Dufour. “It’s dangerous for her…We’re all a bit afraid because she said she’s even willing to die for it.”
Dufour said Harper should meet with First Nations leaders as soon as possible because it is the only way to settle the matter, adding that Spence isn’t asking for much by requesting a meeting with the prime minister.
“Now it’s time for Stephen Harper to show some leadership and to extend a hand and to meet with the leader,” she said.
Spence supporter Maloney, who forwarded the chief’s latest statement, said she was not authorized to speak about Spence’s condition. She said it is getting harder for the chief to host visitors and conduct interviews. The chief has been resting to prepare for Sunday’s guests, which includes 15 NDP MPs, two Liberal MPs and three Liberal senators.
“[We] haven’t heard anything from any Conservatives at all,” she said.
Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan has offered several times to speak with Spence and form a working group, but she rejected his proposals because she believes he is not the one who should be speaking on a nation-to-nation basis.
Federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq, an Inuk who is one of two aboriginal MPs in the Conservative cabinet, urged Spence to stop fasting and accept a meeting with Duncan. “That’s the best way to address her issues,” Aglukkaq said.
Spence chose to continue her fast, hoping to secure a meeting with Harper and the Governor General instead.
Former PM visits Spence
On Saturday afternoon, former prime minister Joe Clark visited Spence, following her open invitation.
In a statement after his meeting, Clark said that “there is a general concern that First Nations–Canada relations are headed in a dangerous direction.”
‘First Nations – Canada relations are headed in a dangerous direction’—Joe Clark, former prime minister
People no longer active in political life may have to help support “the resumption of productive discussions,” he said.
“Chief Spence expressed a humble and achievable vision — one which I believe all Canadians can embrace,” he said, adding honest dialogue and mutual commitment can carry-out her vision.
Idle No More rallies staged across Canada
Meanwhile, Canadians are holding rallies in a show of support for the chief.
At least half a dozen events are planned for Sunday across Canada, said CBC’s Shannon Martin.
The Idle No More movement — which has hosted several demonstrations in past weeks and is loosely tied to Spence’s protest — staged a rally in Toronto, Ont., in response to the chief’s call for action. Participants gathered near the Eaton Centre for a “round dance flash mob,” according to the Toronto chapter’s Twitter account.
In Alberta, about 400 protesters gathered outside Harper’s Calgary office, reported CBC’s Devin Heroux. People performed a round dance, carried signs and played drums as part of an Idle No More flash mob.
Various rallies and demonstrations supporting Spence also took place yesterday in Oklahoma, Washington, Cincinnati, and Regina — where a four-day hunger strike is underway, said Martin. Source
Idle No More is a movement to assert indigenous sovereignty, and to work towards sustainable, renewable development. The movement began in response to Canadian Bill C-45, the government’s omnibus budget implementation bill, that includes changes to land management on reservations which critics feel would enable Canada to control reserves. Along with other areas limiting the control of First Nations in their own territories. For entire Story go HERE
The following editorial was originally featured in the First Nations Strategic Bulletin (FNSB), June-October 2012. You can view/download this latest edition of the FNSB by clicking the following link: FNSB June-October 2012
On September 4th the Harper government clearly signaled its intention to:
1) Focus all its efforts to assimilate First Nations into the existing federal and provincial orders of government of Canada;
2) Terminate the constitutionally protected and internationally recognized Inherent, Aboriginal and Treaty rights of First Nations.
Termination in this context means the ending of First Nations pre-existing sovereign status through federal coercion of First Nations into Land Claims and Self-Government Final Agreements that convert First Nations into municipalities, their reserves into fee simple lands and extinguishment of their Inherent, Aboriginal and Treaty Rights.
To do this the Harper government announced three new policy measures:
A “results based” approach to negotiating Modern Treaties and Self-Government Agreements. This is an assessment process of 93 negotiation tables across Canada to determine who will and who won’t agree to terminate Inherent, Aboriginal and Treaty rights under the terms of Canada’s Comprehensive Claims and Self-Government policies. For those tables who won’t agree, negotiations will end as the federal government withdraws from the table and takes funding with them.
First Nation regional and national political organizations will have their core funding cut and capped. For regional First Nation political organizations the core funding will be capped at $500,000 annually. For some regional organizations this will result in a funding cut of $1 million or more annually. This will restrict the ability of Chiefs and Executives of Provincial Territorial organization’s to organize and/or advocate for First Nations rights and interests.
First Nation Band and Tribal Council funding for advisory services will be eliminated over the next two years further crippling the ability of Chiefs and Councils and Tribal Council executives to analyze and assess the impacts of federal and provincial policies and legislation on Inherent, Aboriginal and Treaty rights.
These three new policy measures are on top of the following unilateral federal legislation the Harper government is imposing over First Nations:
Bill C-27: First Nations Financial Transparency Act
Bill S-2: Family Homes on Reserves and Matrimonial Interests or Rights Act
Bill S-6: First Nations Elections Act
Bill S-8: Safe Drinking Water for First Nations
Bill C-428: Indian Act Amendment and Replacement Act [Private Conservative MP’s Bill, but supported by Harper government]
Then there are the Senate Public Bills:
Bill S-207: An Act to amend the Interpretation Act (non derogation of aboriginal and treaty rights)
Bill S-212: First Nations Self-Government Recognition Bill
The Harper government’s Bills listed above are designed to undermine the collective rights of First Nations by focusing on individual rights. This is the “modern legislative framework” the Conservatives promised in 2006. The 2006 Conservative Platform promised to:
Replace the Indian Act (and related legislation) with a modern legislative framework which provides for the devolution of full legal and democratic responsibility to aboriginal Canadians for their own affairs within the Constitution, including the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Of course “modern” in Conservative terms means assimilation of First Nations by termination of their collective rights and off-loading federal responsibilities onto the First Nations themselves and the provinces.
One Bill that hasn’t been introduced into Parliament yet, but is still expected, is the First Nations’ Private Ownership Act (FNPOA). This private property concept for Indian Reserves—which has been peddled by the likes of Tom Flanagan and tax proponent and former Kamloops Chief Manny Jules—is also a core plank of the Harper government’s 2006 electoral platform.
The 2006 Conservative Aboriginal Platform promised that if elected a Harper government would:
Support the development of individual property ownership on reserves, to encourage lending for private housing and businesses.
The long-term goals set out in the Harper government’s policy and legislative initiatives listed above are not new; they are at least as old as the Indian Act and were articulated in the federal 1969 White Paper on Indian Policy, which set out a plan to terminate Indian rights as the time.
Previous Termination Plans: 1969 White Paper & Buffalo Jump of 1980’s
The objectives of the 1969 White Paper on Indian Policy were to:
As First Nations galvanized across Canada to fight the Trudeau Liberal government’s proposed 1969 termination policy the federal government was forced to consider a strategy on how to calm the Indian storm of protest.
In a memo dated April 1, 1970, David Munro, an Assistant Deputy Minister of Indian Affairs on Indian Consultation and Negotiations, advised his political masters Jean Chrétien and Pierre Trudeau, as follows:
. . . in our definition of objectives and goals, not only as they appear in formal documents, but also as stated or even implied in informal memoranda, draft planning papers, or causal conversation. We must stop talking about having the objective or goal of phasing out in five years. . . We can still believe with just as much strength and sincerity that the [White Paper] policies we propose are the right ones. . .
The final [White Paper] proposal, which is for the elimination of special status in legislation, must be relegated far into the future. . . my conclusion is that we need not change the [White Paper] policy content, but we should put varying degrees of emphasis on its several components and we should try to discuss it in terms of its components rather than as a whole. . . we should adopt somewhat different tactics in relation to [the White Paper] policy, but that we should not depart from its essential content. (Emphasis added)
In the early 1970’s, the Trudeau Liberal government did back down publicly on implementing the 1969 White Paper on Indian Policy, but as we can see from Mr. Munro’s advice the federal bureaucracy changed the timeline from five years to a long-term implementation of the 1969 White Paper objectives of assimilation/termination.
In the mid-1980’s the Mulroney Conservative government resurrected the elements of the 1969 White Paper on Indian Policy, through a Cabinet memo.
In 1985, a secret federal Cabinet submission was leaked to the media by a DIAND employee. The Report was nicknamed the “Buffalo Jump of the 1980’s” by another federal official. The nickname referred to the effect of the recommendations in the secret Cabinet document, which if adopted, would lead Status Indians to a cultural death — hence the metaphor.
The Buffalo Jump Report proposed a management approach for First Nations policy and
programs, which had the following intent:
Limiting & eventually terminating the federal trust obligations;
Reducing federal expenditures for First Nations, under funding programs, and prohibiting deficit financing;
Shifting responsibility and costs for First Nations services to provinces and “advanced bands” through co-management, tri-partite, and community self-government agreements;
“Downsizing” of the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND) through a devolution of program administration to “advanced bands” and transfer of programs to other federal departments;
Negotiating municipal community self-government agreements with First Nations which would result in the First Nation government giving up their Constitutional status as a sovereign government and becoming a municipality subject to provincial or territorial laws;
Extinguishing aboriginal title and rights in exchange for fee simple title under provincial or territorial law while giving the province or territory underlying title to First Nations lands.
The Mulroney government’s “Buffalo Jump” plan was temporarily derailed due the 1990 “Oka Crisis”. Mulroney responded to the “Oka Crisis” with his “Four Pillars” of Native Policy:
Accelerating the settlement of land claims;
Improving the economic and social conditions on Reserves;
Strengthening the relationships between Aboriginal Peoples and governments;
Examining the concerns of Canada’s Aboriginal Peoples in contemporary Canadian life.
In 1991, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney also announced the establishment of a Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, which began its work later that year; the establishment of an Indian Claims Commission to review Specific Claims; the establishment of a BC Task Force on Claims, which would form the basis for the BC Treaty Commission Process.
In 1992, Aboriginal organizations and the federal government agreed, as part of the 1992 Charlottetown Accord, on amendments to the Constitution Act, 1982 that would have included recognition of the inherent right of self-government for Aboriginal people. For the first time, Aboriginal organizations had been full participants in the talks; however, the Accord was rejected in a national referendum.
With the failure of Canadian constitutional reform in 1992, for the last twenty years, the federal government—whether Liberal or Conservative—has continued to develop policies and legislation based upon the White Paper/Buffalo Jump objectives and many First Nations have regrettably agreed to compromise their constitutional/international rights by negotiating under Canada’s termination policies.
Canada’s Termination Policies Legitimized by Negotiation Tables
It has been thirty years since Aboriginal and Treaty rights have been “recognized and affirmed” in section 35 of Canada’s constitution. Why hasn’t the constitutional protection for First Nations’ Inherent, Aboriginal and Treaty rights been implemented on the ground?
One answer to this question is, following the failure of the First Ministers’ Conferences on Aboriginal Matters in the 1980’s, many First Nations agreed to compromise their section 35 Inherent, Aboriginal and Treaty rights by entering into or negotiating Modern Treaties and/or Self-government Agreements under Canada’s unilateral negotiation terms.
These Modern Treaties and Self-Government Agreements not only contribute to emptying out section 35 of Canada’s constitution of any significant legal, political or economic meaning. Final settlement agreements are then used as precedents against other First Nations’ who are negotiating.
Moreover, Canada’s Land Claims and Self-Government policies are far below the international standards set out in the Articles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Canada publicly endorsed the UNDRIP in November 2010, but obviously Canada’s interpretation of the UNDRIP is different than that of most First Nations, considering their unilateral legislation and policy approach.
Canada’s voted against UNDRIP on Sept. 13, 2007, stating that the UNDRIP was inconsistent with Canada’s domestic policies, especially the Articles dealing with Indigenous Peoples’ Self-Determination, Land Rights and Free, Prior Informed Consent.
Canada’s position on UNDRIP now is that they can interpret it as they please, although the principles in UNDRIP form part of international not domestic law.
The federal strategy is to maintain the Indian Act (with amendments) as the main federal law to control and manage First Nations. The only way out of the Indian Act for First Nations is to negotiate an agreement under Canada’s one-sided Land Claims and/or Self-Government policies. These Land Claims/Self-Government Agreements all require the termination of Indigenous rights for some land, cash and delegated jurisdiction under the existing federal and provincial orders of government.
Canada has deemed that it will not recognize the pre-existing sovereignty of First Nations or allow for a distinct First Nations order of government based upon section 35 of Canada’s constitution.
Through blackmail, bribery or force, Canada is using the poverty of First Nations to obtain concessions from First Nations who want out of the Indian Act by way of Land Claims/Self- Government Agreements. All of these Agreements conform to Canada’s interpretation of section 35 of Canada’s constitution, which is to legally, politically and economically convert First Nations into what are essentially ethnic municipalities.
The first groups in Canada who have agreed to compromise their section 35 Inherent and Aboriginal rights through Modern Treaties have created an organization called the Land Claims Agreement Coalition. The Coalition Members are:
Council of Yukon First Nations (representing 9 land claim organizations in the Yukon)
Grand Council of the Crees (Eeyou Istchee)
Gwich’in Tribal Council
Inuvialuit Regional Corporation
Kwanlin Dun First Nation
Maa-nulth First Nations
Makivik Corporation
Naskapi Nation of Kawawachikamach
Nisga’a Nation
Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.
Nunatsiavut Government
Sahtu Secretariat Inc.
Tlicho Government
Tsawwassen First Nation
Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation
The Land Claims Agreement Coalition Members came together because the federal government wasn’t properly implementing any of their Modern Treaties. So the Coalition essentially became a lobby group to collectively pressure the federal government to respect their Modern Treaties. According to Members of the Coalition Modern Treaty implementation problems persist today.
The fact that Canada has already broken the Modern Treaties shouldn’t inspire confidence for those First Nations who are already lined up at Canada’s Comprehensive Claims and Self-Government negotiation tables.
According to the federal Department of Aboriginal Affairs there are 93 Modern Treaty and/or Self-Government negotiation tables across Canada [http://www.aadncaandc.gc.ca/eng/1346782327802/1346782485058].
Those First Nations who are negotiating at these 93 tables are being used by the federal government (and the provinces/Territories) to legitimize its Comprehensive Claims and Self-Government policies, which are based upon extinguishment of Aboriginal Title and termination of Inherent, Aboriginal and Treaty rights.
The First Nations who have been refusing to negotiate and are resisting the federal Comprehensive Claims and Self-Government negotiating policies are routinely ignored by the federal government and kept under control and managed through the Indian Act (with amendments).
Attempts by non-negotiating First Nations to reform the federal Comprehensive Claims and Self-Government policies aren’t taken seriously by the federal government because there are so many First Nations who have already compromised their Inherent, Aboriginal and Treaty rights by agreeing to negotiate under the terms and funding conditions of these Comprehensive Claims and Self-Government policies.
For example, following the 1997 Supreme Court of Canada Delgamuukw decision, which recognized that Aboriginal Title exists in Canada, the Assembly of First Nations tried to reform the Comprehensive Claims policy to be consistent with the Supreme Court of Canada Delgamuukw decision.
However, the then Minister of Indian Affairs, Robert Nault on December 22, 2000, wrote a letter addressed to then Chief Arthur Manuel that essentially said why should the federal government change the Comprehensive Claims policy if First Nations are prepared to negotiate under it as it is?
A fair question: why do First Nations remain at negotiation tables that ultimately lead to the termination of their peoples Inherent and Aboriginal rights, especially since it appears that Modern Treaties are routinely broken after they are signed by the federal government?
Many of these negotiations are in British Columbia where despite the past twenty years of negotiations the B.C. Treaty process has produced two small Modern Treaties, Tsawwassan and Maa’Nulth. The Nisga’a Treaty was concluded in 2000, outside of the B.C. Treaty process.
All of these Modern Treaties have resulted in extinguishing Aboriginal Title, converting reserve lands into fee simple, removing tax exemptions, converting bands into municipalities, among other impacts on Inherent and Aboriginal rights.
The Harper Government’s Termination Plan
Aside from the unilateral legislation being imposed, or the funding cuts and caps to First Nation’s and their political organizations, the September 4, 2012, announcement of a “results based” approach to Modern Treaties and Self-Government negotiations amounts to a “take it or leave it” declaration on the part of the Harper government to the negotiating First Nations.
Canada’s Comprehensive Claims Policy requires First Nations to borrow money from the federal government to negotiate their “land claims”. According to the federal government:
To date, the total of outstanding loans to Aboriginal groups from Canada to support their participation in negotiations is $711 million. This represents a significant financial liability for the Aboriginal community. In addition, the government of Canada provides $60 million in grants and contributions to Aboriginal groups every year for negotiations.
It is Canada’s policies that forced First Nations to borrow money to negotiate their “claims”, so the “financial liability” was a policy measure designed by the federal government to pressure First Nations into settling their “claims” faster. As the federal government puts it, the Comprehensive Claims negotiation process has instead “spawned a negotiation industry that has no incentive to reach agreement.”
This accumulated debt of $711 million along with the $60 million annual in grants and contributions have compromised those negotiating First Nations and their leaders to the point that they are unable or unwilling to seriously confront the Harper government’s termination plan.
Over 50% of the Comprehensive Claims are located in B.C. and the First Nations Summit represents the negotiating First Nations in B.C., although some negotiating First Nations have now joined the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs (UBCIC), thus blurring the historic distinctions between to two political organizations. The latter organization previously vigorously opposed the B.C. Treaty process, but now the UBCIC remains largely silent about it.
These two main political organizations — the First Nations Summit and the UBCIC — have now joined together into the B.C. First Nations Leadership Council, further blending the rights and interests of their respective member communities together, not taking into account whether they are in or out of the B.C. Treaty process.
This may partially explain why the Chiefs who are not in the B.C. Treaty process also remain largely silent about the Harper government’s “results based’ approach to Modern Treaties and Self-Government negotiations.
First Nations in British Columbia are failing to capitalize on that fact, that since the Delgamuukw Decision, the governments have to list unresolved land claims and litigation as a contingent liability. Such liabilities can affect Canada’s sovereign credit rating and provincial credit ratings. To counter this outstanding liability, Canada points to the British Columbia Treaty Process as the avenue how they are dealing with this liability, pointing to the fact that First Nations are borrowing substantive amounts to negotiate with the governments.
Another recent example of how disconnected B.C. First Nations and their organizations are on international versus domestic policy and law, is the First Nations’ outcry over the recent Canada-China Treaty.
The B.C. Chiefs and their organizations are publicly denouncing the Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement as adversely impacting on Aboriginal Title and Rights, yet they say or do nothing about Harper’s accelerated termination plan. It seems the negotiating First Nations are more worried about the Canada-China Treaty blocking a future land claims deal under the B.C. Treaty process.
The Chiefs and their organizations at the B.C. Treaty process negotiation tables have had twenty years to negotiate the “recognition and affirmation” of Aboriginal Title and Rights, but this continues to be impossible under Canada’s policies aiming at the extinguishment of collective rights. As a result only two extinguishment Treaties have resulted from the process. Even Sophie Pierre, Chair of the B.C. Treaty Commission has said “If we can’t do it, it’s about time we faced the obvious – I guess we don’t have it, so shut her down”.
By most accounts the twenty year old B.C. Treaty process has been a failure. It has served the governments’ purpose of countering their contingent liabilities regarding Indigenous land rights. Yet it seems the negotiating First Nations are so compromised by their federal loans and dependent on the negotiations funding stream that they are unable or unwilling to withdraw from the tables en masse and make real on the demand that the Harper government reform its Comprehensive Claims and Self-Government policies to be consistent with the Articles of the UNDRIP.
The same can also be said for the negotiating First Nations in the Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic regions.
The Chiefs who are not in the B.C., Quebec or Atlantic negotiating processes have not responded much, if at all, to Harper’s “results based” approach to Modern Treaties and Self-Government. The non-negotiating Chiefs seem to be more interested in managing programs and services issues than their Aboriginal Title and Rights. As one federal official put it, the Chiefs are involved in the elements of the 1969 White Paper on Indian Policy like economic and social development while ignoring the main White Paper objective—termination of First Nations legal status.
Conclusion
Given their silence over the Harper government’s “results based” “take it or leave it” negotiations approach, it seems many of the negotiating First Nations at the Comprehensive Claims and/or Self-Government tables are still contemplating concluding Agreements under Canada’s termination policies.
This can only lead to further division among First Nations across Canada as more First Nations compromise their constitutional and international rights by consenting to final settlement agreements under the terms and conditions of Canada’s termination policies, while undermining the political positions of the non-negotiating First Nations.
In the meantime, Harper’s government will continue pawning off Indigenous lands and resources in the midst of a financial crisis though free trade and foreign investment protection agreements, which will secure foreign corporate access to lands and resources and undermine Indigenous Rights.
Some First Nation leaders and members have criticised AFN National Chief Shawn Atleo for agreeing to a joint approach with the Harper government, including the Crown-First Nations Gathering (CFNG), but to be fair, the Chiefs across Canada did nothing to pressure Prime Minister Harper going into the CFNG. Instead, many Chiefs used the occasion as a photo op posing with the Prime Minister.
The negotiating First Nations who are in joint processes with Canada seem to be collectively heading to the cliff of the “Buffalo Jump” as they enter termination agreements with Canada emptying out section 35 in the process.
Much of the criticism of AFN National Chief Atleo has come from the Prairie Treaty Chiefs. Interestingly, if one looks at the federal chart of the 93 negotiation tables [http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1346782327802/1346782485058] not too many First Nations from historic Treaty areas are involved in the Self-Government tables, except for the Ontario region where the Union of Ontario Indians and Nisnawbe-Aski Nation are negotiating Self-Government agreements.
As a result of the September 4, 2012 announcements regarding changes to Modern Treaties and Self-Government negotiations, cuts and caps to funding First Nations political organizations and unilateral legislation initiatives, it is obvious that Prime Minister Harper has tricked the AFN National Chief and First Nations by showing that the CFNG “outcomes” were largely meaningless.
One commitment that Prime Minister Harper made at the CFNG—which he will probably keep—Is making a progress report in January 2013. The Prime Minister will probably announce the progress being made with all of the negotiating tables across Canada, along with his legislative initiatives.
It appears First Nations are at the proverbial “end of the trail” as the Chiefs seem to be either co-opted or afraid to challenge the Harper government. Most grassroots peoples aren’t even fully informed about the dangerous situation facing them and their future generations.
The only way to counter the Harper government is to:
have all negotiating First Nations suspend their talks; and
organize coordinated National Days of Action to register First Nations opposition to the Harper government’s termination plan;
Demand Canada suspend all First Nations legislation in Parliament, cease introducing new Bills and
Change Canada’s Land Claims and Self-Government Policies to “recognize and affirm” the Inherent, Aboriginal and Treaty Rights of First Nations, including respect and implementation of the Historic Treaties.
If there is no organized protest and resistance to the Harper government’s termination plan, First Nations should accept their place at the bottom of all social, cultural and economic indicators in Canada, just buy into Harper’s jobs and economic action plan—and be quiet about their rights. Source
From 2011 First Nations people again were ignored until the media got involved.
Seems the Canadian press did not do so well in reporting these protests. There are more then the two below that took place across Canada. Check Youtube for more coverage. Or other world media.
Harper is ignoring the people he is representing. He is ignoring the fact that poverty is killing people.
One must ask themselves, is Harper is a fit leader for Canada?
Ignoring ones own people is a crime against said people.
So is Harper going to follow Germany’s lead. Throwing the poor out of the country. Link below. Be sure to check it out. Canada is following their lead with all the privatization.
I am discussed by all of this. For two so called fist world nations they are both appalling. No excuse for either or.
Seems to me the people of your countries should come first and fore-most.
No real leadership in Germany nor is there any in Canada. Both brag of how wealthy they are and yet both treat their citizens like yesterdays garbage.
Both leaders think they have the right to tell others what to do and yet either or cannot even keep the people of their own countries safe.
As first world countries both are failures.
Both should look into their own back yards and clean up the mess.
This is a very long story. It is turning into a book and seems maybe even a set of Encyclopedia’s.
To my Readers, Canada is headed down the same path as the US, UK etc They are being stripped of their, rights and freedoms. Canada is quickly being turned into a police state. So if you have friends who are Canadian please forward this information to them. The working class have little time to watch the news or get all the details. As is it seems the Government has strives to hoodwink them, full well knowing few may have noticed. Help keep them informed.
Many Canadians cannot afford to be on-line many can’t even afford Cable or satellite, they to need to be informed. To all Canadians let those people know, their rights are being removed and their is a problem with their new Government.
The beacon of light Canada once was, is slowly falling into a dark place.
March 7 2012
The Coservatives Asked Elections Canada for the list of Voters.
This has never been done before. So why would they do that?
What did they do with the list?
I also have to say I am impressed with the Canadian Press.
It is a rare thing for the Press in the US to do anything of this magnitude. They just go after the guy the Rich corporations or Lobby’s, want to have discredited. One can on fantasize, of having press like this in the US.
Now for the new information they have found.
Voter identification ‘massive job,’ central Conservative campaign gives voter lists to local candidates
March 7 2012
A couple of Quotes from the story.
Mr. Vellacott, however, said the Conservative Party, with its massive computer data banks in Ottawa, centrally creates election-period voter lists for every election, including telephone numbers, for each of the individual candidate campaigns
The party lists, also used for the election last year, are based on updated Elections Canada voter lists that are released to all candidates and registered political parties after the election campaign period begins. The final revised list is sent out three days before an election.
The list Elections Canada distributes to parties and candidates on computer discs contain only names and addresses of voters, not phone numbers.
Elections Canada confirmed to The Hill Times on Tuesday that for the first time in a federal election a representative of one of the recognized parties, the Conservative Party, had before the election requested that the initial voter list given to the parties at the beginning of the campaign include the location of polling sites. In response, Elections Canada provided the information to the Conservative Party and the other recognized parties. Source
Note:
The Conservatives last week denied a request by Elections Canada for the power to demand receipts for political parties’ election spending, raising questions about why?
March 7 2012
A couple of Quotes from the story.
An NDP motion that calls on the government to make campaign call centres register with Elections Canada is expected to pass, with the Conservatives planning to vote in favour.
The motion is non-binding but gives opposition MPs the chance to speak at length about the need for such legislation, dredge up the so-called in-and-out scandal and tie it to the current controversy over fraudulent and harassing phone calls during the last federal election.
The NDP motion, to be debated Thursday, calls for the government to make three changes to the Elections Canada Act in the next six months:
Give Elections Canada stronger investigative powers, including the ability to force political parties to provide supporting documents for their expenses.
Require all telecommunication companies that provide voter contact services during a general election to register with Elections Canada.
Make telecommunication companies identify and verify the identity of election clients.
MP Dean Del Mastro Said the conservative made about 6 million calls. Now that Costs a fortune. Now MP Dean Del Mastro has a hard time telling the truth, He hasn’t really told the truth, as of yet. I have watched many Videos and he just keeps fouling up,.That is being kind on my part. So his word means very little.
The Conservatives may have made more calls then the 6 million as MP Dean Del Mastro claims Time will tell.
As the reporter said even at $1 a call, that is a lot of money. Well lets hope their receipts reluctant that number. $6 million just on phone calls.
The Liberals and NDP both will turn over all records, but the Conservatives have not committed to doing so.
Harper could have given more power already. So this is a rather pathetic move on his part. Non Binding is even more useless.
So would Revenue Canada let the rest of it’s citizens hire a private Auditor to Audit their own Income taxes. I don’t think so. That is just a really foolish statement. Why then should Elections Canada Allow something like that.
CBC says there was a late influx of unregistered voters, who got to vote without providing an address in the riding as required by Elections Canada rules. CBC says it discovered at least 2,700 applications for late registration to vote that failed to provide addresses, or gave false or non-residential addresses.
Volpe’s lawyer Tony Pascale told CBC he wants Elections Canada to revisit the riding. “There were an inordinately high number of voters registering who were not on the voters list in order to cast ballots,” he said.
Meanwhile, another former Liberal MP is mulling a legal challenge of the results of one of the closest races of the 2011 election, the Globe and Mail is reporting.
Incumbent Liberal MP Anthony Rota lost in the northern Ontario riding of Nipissing-Timiskaming by 18 votes to Conservative Jay Aspin.
The newspaper reports that Elections Canada is interviewing people who say they received automated phone calls directing them to the wrong polling station, as well as live phone calls from persons purporting to be from the Liberal party, but apparently trying to alienate voters. Source
Opposition delays passage of controversial crime bill
Bill C-10, the Safe Streets and Communities Act
The NDP employed procedural delays following question period that left no more time for further debate and the final vote.
But before moving on to a series of votes on private members bills, the Conservatives did manage to pass a time allocation motion to limit debate on the bill to one more day. Source
Canadians do not want this bill however.
Critics argue the cost of Bill C-10 will be enormous, that it favours incarceration over rehabilitation and reintegration and that it will lead to prison overcrowding.
Mar. 07, 2012
Riot police clashed with students protesting planned tuition-fee hikes Wednesday. University student Frank Levesque-Nicole says he was roughed up by police. Looks very much like the kids were not being violent. Canada and the US are backwards. Many Countries across the ocean, have free Education in College and University for their children. Those countries are quite prosperous.
Such a shame to see Canada and the US lagging behind. They always have enough money for war however.
The student group CLASSE says Francis Grenier, a student at CEGEP St. Jerome was hit in the face with a stun grenade and may lose vision in his right eye. March 7, 2012
March 8 2010
The link below tells about yesterday and today protests.
Harper’s Libya victory ceremony cost soared to over $800,000
The price tag for a ceremony on Parliament Hill to celebrate Canada’s military mission in Libya was more than double the original agreed cost, prompting questions among some in uniform about whether approval was obtained for the increased spending, according to Defence Department documents obtained by the Ottawa Citizen. Source
Harper and his Celebrating Mass Murder is just sick.
Still no word on the cost, to bomb Libya back to the stone age.
Canada is a mining behemoth. Canadian companies in the sector account for almost half the mining activities in the world, in 100 countries, according to the government.
A range of Canadian mining companies are associated with accusations of murder, rape, corruption, forced displacement, and environmental destruction, worldwide. This abuse continues precisely because Canada lacks corporate social responsibility standards Sorce
Canada: Attawapiskat Housing Crisis A Serious Risk To Women, Children, Elders
By Ahni Nov 22, 2011
Children living in un-insulated tents; families relying on buckets for toilets; elders living in sheds–these are some of the conditions witnessed by Timmins-James Bay MP Charlie Angus and MPP Gilles Bisson on a tour through Attawapiskat this month.
For almost two years, the Attawapiskat First Nation has been facing a severe housing shortage. As MP Charlie Angus recently witnessed first-hand, there are several families on the reserve who are living in makeshift shelters including uninsulated tents, converted garages, temporary trailers and deteriorating homes filled with Stachybotrys chartarum–a fungi more commonly known as black mold.
Some of the shelters have no heat, electricity, or plumbing of any kind. Some don’t even have toilets, so instead people are using plastic buckets, which they are dumping into nearby ditches.
With winter fast approaching, the housing shortage is turning into the kind of crisis that humanitarian aid groups would normally flock to in droves, if it was happening in Haiti or Darfur. But the Cree Fist Nation isn’t in Haiti, it’s in Canada. And Canada is basically doing nothing. In fact, these days the government seems more interested in spying on Cindy Blackstock and shutting down native healing centres than actually helping and working with Indigenous Peoples.
In response to the ongoing crisis, Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence recently declared a state of emergency, in which she pleaded for the government to step in and, if necessary, lead an emergency evacuation to ensure everyone’s health and safety. The government said no.
It probably came as no surprise to Chief Spence, given the way Canada has dealt with Attawapiskat in recent years. For instance, in 2009, another state of emergency was declared after INAC finally stepped in to clean up a 30,000 gallon oil spill from the 1970s. The mass of oil had accumulated directly beneath the community’s school grounds.
Some 30 years later, children at the school started getting sick, leaving Attawapiskat with no choice but to abandon the building. INAC responded by providing a new makeshift school a few metres away; but the actual clean up didn’t begin for another nine years.
In 2009, INAC demolished the old school and left an “open wound” at the center of the community, which it covered with a tarp.
Soon after that, community members started complaining of headaches, nausea, skin rashes, nosebleeds and chronic diarrhea. In the makeshift school, some children were said to be just “passing out”.
Canada did nothing. In fact, then-INAC Minster Chuck Strahl even went so far as to say that the whole situation was little more than a publicity stunt being propped up “on the backs of needy aboriginal people.”
This time around, the Canadian government appears to be acting a shade more reasonably, but only a shade. They recently promised to give the First Nation $500,000 to renovate 15 houses; but that’s it. Federal officials haven’t even bothered to visit the community. And who knows how long that will take for that fund to go through; never mind the fact that almost half of the houses on the reserve need renovations or are condemned.
Attawapiskat is getting an undisclosed amount of money from De Beers; however, Chief Spence says the bulk of that money goes directly into a trust fund which they can’t access for housing. Chief Spence is trying to renegotiate with De Beers, but those negotiations don’t appear to be going anywhere. Source
The Canadian government says it has given Attawapiskat roughly $90 million since 2006. However, documents from the department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada show Attawapiskat only received $4.3 million in funding for housing since 2006. Source
Someone is not being truthful. Which is it?
I am guessing they only received $4.3 million.
Harper’s government is not to reliable when it comes to facts.
Even if they did get $90,000,000
Divided by 6 years
= $15,000.000 per year
Divided by 1,800 citizens
= $8,333 per person per year = about
$694 per month per person
When you bring it down to reality it really isn’t very much.
That money of course does not go to the people. Some does, but not it all.
A few things money is used for in Northern Communities.
They have to bring in most of what they use.
Shipping is a huge cost.
Snow Removal.
Building maintenance for schools or should I say school and portables.
They need an air port.
Have to pay the teachers, janitors etc.
Have to pay for the Health Care workers.
Have to pay the airport personnel and maintenance.
Have to pay for road maintenance employees.
Those are just a few of the things not all. There are many more if I took the time to really think about it.
The cost of living in Attawapiskat is quite high, due to the expense of shipping goods to the community.
Local stores include the Northern Store and M. Koostachin & Sons (1976). More than a third of the residents occasionally place orders for perishables and other goods which are shipped in via aircraft from Timmins, and for which the residents make prepayments with money orders. When their orders arrive, the residents have to pick them up at the local airport. For example, 6 apples and 4 small bottles of juice cost $23.50 (2011-12-01).
The price of gasoline is considerably higher than the provincial average. When the fuel is shipped via winter road, the prices of gasoline and propane tend to drop slightly.
It costs $250,000 to build a house in Attawapiskat and only the Federal Government can build houses on the reserve. . The cost of renovating one condemned house is $50,000-$100,000. A majority of the community members have updated their heating needs, while many households still use dry firewood. Firewood in Attawapiskat costs $150 and $200 a cord, and a cord will heat a winter-bound tent for only a week, or at most 10 days. More information at Source
Charlie Angus, scrum on Attawapiskat – 111201
Dec 1, 2011
Charlie Angus, NDP MP for Timmins-James Bay answered questions about the First Nations community of Attawapiskat in crisis – recorded by Samantha Bayard and Ish Theilheimer for Straight Goods News on December 1, 2011 during a scrum on Parliament Hill.
Canadian leadership in Attawapiskat
NDP Canada on Dec 1, 2011
ATTAWAPISKAT HOUSING-CRISIS
Attawapiskat First Nation is on the shores of James Bay Ontario.
Gilles on Attawapiskat Housing crisis
Nov 23 2011
Timmins James Bay MPP Gilles Bisson calls on provincial government to help residents of Attawapiskat
Canada AM – Attawapiskat
This video was taken fall 2010 when my family and I had visited Attawapiskat. Canada AM followed us up, and created this documentary to bring awareness to the housing, food, and ect. crises. since then not much has changed. and the people continue to lose more, and more hope.
Attawapiskat
This video was taken fall 2010
Attawapiskat – where are the promises?
Apr 14, 2009
Attawapiskat is the home of the Mushkegowuk (swampy) Cree that is situated on the west coast of James Bay. The community has been exposed to toxic fumes dating back to 30 years. Since 1979, about 30, 000 gallons of hydrocarbon oil spill has occured underneath the old school grounds. In the year 2000, there were health concerns of children and the staff getting sick. This resulted the closure of the old school. INAC build temporary portables near the contamination site til the new school was build. The community worked hard in negotiations with INAC and the government to get a new school and finally came to light! There was Hope once again for the children. Everything was in the process until the the new government stepped in 2007. On August 2007, Minister Chuck Strahl became the new Minister for Indian and Northern Affairs Canada under the leadership of the Conservatives. On December 2007, Minister of INAC decided to halt the deal, that left the community devastated. But that didn’t stop the community and the Children, they went as far to having a Human Rights Conference in Toronto. The students argue for a right to a quality education in safe environment in November 2008. Mr. Chuck Strahl was invited but didn’t show up?
Finally on March of 2009 , the old school was demolish under the direction of INAC, exposing the ground once capped by the old building. The contaminated debris wasn’t properly contained and was dump too closed to the community. As for the old building, it wasn’t capped leaving the fumes exposed to the residence. A stench was reported making the students, teachers and the community sick which then resulted to the closing of the schools, shortly by a declared state of emergency from the leaders. A few days later, INAC and Health Canada flew in to meet with the community and listen to the community’s testimonies of getting nausea, headaches, dizziness and skin rashes? The community felt it had to do with the contaminated ground and their water source.
INAC responded that they would take the information back to their Superiors and report back of their decision for further immediate action. Three days later, Attawapiskat was devastated when INAC and Health Canada went to the media and said “There was no iniminent dangers and that the community’s air tested normal?”. The Leaders didn’t buy it! As of April 9, 2009, Attawapiskat is still under state of emergency and have no trust in the government officials. They suspected that something wasn’t right with their findingsl because of all the testimonies that were given at the meeting of people getting sick? That people were dying from cancer too fast, children having skin rashes and the stench of the contaminated oil can still be smell.
Later that week, MP Charlie Angus and MPP Gilles Bisson responded to the urgent call of the Attawapiskat Chief and Council and did their own investigations. They were shock to find out the extent of this urgent matter and confirm the seriousness of addressing the health concerns right away.The next day, Both parties called for a National Press Conference and share their findings. Shortly after, INAC responded by saying, it was just a grandstanding photo-op? Which is not true. The Reps of James Bay-Timmins took soil samples with them and send them to Ottawa to get tested right away, doing INAC and Health Canada’s job for them?? They are calling on independent study by the medical and environmental team. As of today, INAC still refuses to evacuate the reserve even though they asked for immediate action until the remediation was completed and safe. The community was very upset to find out it would take INAC 2 more years to clean up the contamination site which wasn’t acceptable.
Ask yourself this question? Would you find it acceptable from INAC (Indian Northern Affairs of Canada) if they told you everything is fine in your community and there is nothing to worry about? While the children are breaking up in rashes, people getting sick and alot of reports of cancers since 30 years ago? Think about it…..Would you be willing to accept returning your children back to the toxic zone for their education? Would this happen down south? Is it acceptable to be told that it would take 2 years to finish cleaning up the toxic soil after it has been there for 30 years. These schools were under INAC’s watch when the spills happened…… If this reaches you, please help the community and put your government to shame!! Spread this video and let the world know what our Government is doing to their Indigenous People!
Shannen’s Dream of a new school may become reality in 2013. Will it really happen? Well I guess we will have to wait and see.
There have been promises before and still no school for the children.
After 2000, three successive INAC ministers — Robert Nault, Andy Scott and Jim Prentice — promised a new school for Attawapiskat. You can read the full chronology of seven years of negotiations on the departmental website. On April 1, 2008, the new minister, Chuck Strahl, informed AFNEA that Ottawa would not finance the new school after all. Well wasn’t that just the worst slap in the face a bunch of kids could get. Shannen Koostachin at the National Day of Action on Parliament Hill in May 2008, a rally calling for better schools for First Nations children. The Attawapiskat teenager organized children in her community to lobby for a school to replace the portable classrooms she grew up attending. She was killed in a car accident on June 1 2010 at the age of 15.Photo Courtesy of 8th Fire
8th Fire: Aboriginal Peoples, Canada and the Way Forward. The four-part series begins airing on CBC television and Radio-Canada on Jan. 12, 2012.
Canadian Red Cross provides relief in Attawapiskat
The Canadian Red Cross is on the ground in Attawapiskat providing urgently needed aid to vulnerable families in the community.
“Our goal in Attawapiskat is to ensure that the immediate needs of the community are met, which includes making sure families have the supplies they need to survive the winter,” said John Saunders, provincial director of disaster management with the Canadian Red Cross. “We are focused on providing short-term relief to the community.”
The Canadian Red Cross is helping the families of Attawapiskat on the request of the local chief, Theresa Spence, and will continue to work alongside public authorities.
On November 29, a Red Cross team consisting of Saunders and two volunteers from Timmins arrived with preliminary supplies including sleeping bags, heaters and winter clothing. The team is conducting assessments to determine exactly what items and quantities are needed for short-term relief. Once the assessment is complete, the Canadian Red Cross will distribute those supplies.
In Attawapiskat, the Canadian Red Cross has identified families living in tents and wooden sheds without electricity and plumbing in most dwellings. Some homes have power by running extension cords. Some have created make shift wood stoves out of old oil drums, which is a threat to public safety and health.
Government and community officials continue to work to determine long-term solutions.
At the further request of the community, the Canadian Red Cross has taken on a donation management role. Canadians wishing to support immediate needs can make a donation through the Red Cross online, by phone by calling 1-800-418-111 or in person at their local Red Cross office. Red Cross.Ca
Libya took better care of it’s people then Canada does. Canada helped Carpet Bomb them back to the stone ages and could afford to do that but not help their own people.
Did You Know
1. There is no electricity bill in Libya; electricity is free for all its citizens.
2. There is no interest on loans, banks in Libya are state-owned and loans given to all its citizens at zero percent interest by law.
3. Having a home considered a human right in Libya.
4. All newlyweds in Libya receive $60,000 dinar (U.S.$50,000) by the government to buy their first apartment so to help start up the family.
5. Education and medical treatments are free in Libya. Before Gaddafi only 25 percent of Libyans were literate. Today, the figure is 83 percent.
6. Should Libyans want to take up farming career, they would receive farming land, a farming house, equipments, seeds and livestock to kickstart their farms are all for free.
7. If Libyans cannot find the education or medical facilities they need, the government funds them to go abroad, for it is not only paid for, but they get a U.S.$2,300/month for accommodation and car allowance.
8. If a Libyan buys a car, the government subsidizes 50 percent of the price.
9. The price of petrol in Libya is $0.14 per liter.
10. Libya has no external debt and its reserves amounting to $150 billion are now frozen globally.
11. If a Libyan is unable to get employment after graduation the state would pay the average salary of the profession, as if he or she is employed, until employment is found.
12. A portion of every Libyan oil sale is credited directly to the bank accounts of all Libyan citizens.
13. A mother who gives birth to a child receive U.S.$5,000.
14. 40 loaves of bread in Libya costs $0.15.
15. 25 percent of Libyans have a university degree.
16. Gaddafi carried out the world’s largest irrigation project, known as the Great Manmade River project, to make water readily available throughout the desert country.
17 Women’s Rights: Under Gaddafi, gender discrimination was officially banned and the literacy rate for women climbed to 83 per cent. The rights of Black’s were also improved. Source
The Harper Government wants to create more Criminals. The total crime rate for serious offences fell by 19% between 2000 and 2010. The crime severity rate has fallen 6% since 1998, which means that Canadians commit fewer violent crimes like murders, attempted murders and serious assaults. There are also fewer brake-ins, car thefts, robberies and drunk driving charges — still Harper wants to spend massive amounts of our money locking up more Canadians.
Crime rates in Canada have been falling steadily for over a decade yet Harper insists on spending our money to lock up our most vulnerable citizens like youth and aboriginals. Spending billions on bad crime laws means that our taxes will rise or valuable social programs like Employment Insurance will be cut. Quebec and Ontario have already said they won’t pay.
Creating mandatory minimum sentences for marijuana smokers and putting kids who make mistakes behind bars is not the way to make Canada a better place. Join the call to show Harper that we’d rather invest in social programs that really help Canadians.
This week, experts are speaking out against the massive crime bill that our Conservative government is rushing through Parliament.1 Even conservative Texans are warning Canada not to follow American’s failed path of mandatory sentences and massive prison expansion.2 Now, we need a massive public outcry to stop the bill, and make Canada safer, not meaner.
Experts agree that the crime bill would make Canada a more dangerous place by filling new prisons with people who should not be there. Instead, experience shows that we should focus on proven strategies to prevent crime, rehabilitate people and reintegrate them into society.1,3 The stakes are huge: if this bill passes we will be spending billions to trap people and create a permanent underclass of Canadians with little hope for a better life.4
The good news is that more and more Canadians are speaking out and public opinion is close to a decisive shift. The Conservatives want to be “Canada’s natural governing party” and they care about public opinion. We need to show the Conservative government that they can either choose a better path, or they will pay a serious political cost for making Canada a meaner and more dangerous place.
Mandatory sentences and prison expansion backfired in the United States, a country with only 5% of the global population and 25% of all the world’s prisoners. Today, state after state is in crisis and is repealing those laws.2
One conservative Texan, Judge John Creuzot of the Dallas County Court, has warned us, saying: You will spend billions and billions and billions on locking people up. And there will come a point in time where the public says, ‘Enough!’ And you’ll wind up letting them out.” 2
We all want to make Canada safer. Yes, there is a role for punishment that is proportionate to the crime and wisely chosen for the circumstance. However, in the vast majority of cases, rehabilitation is better than long jail sentences. Canada âs focus on prevention and rehabilitation has already brought crime rates to historic lows.3,5
Every billion dollars our federal government forces our provinces to spend on new prisons is a billion dollars that could have been spent preventing crimes by supporting programs for at-risk youth, drug and alcohol treatment programs, and strategies for mental health.
The crime bill represents a creeping erosion of Canada’s social fabric. We know that millions of Canadians believe that prevention and restorative justice – approaches that make sure the victim’s needs are met and the community is healed – should be the heart of Canadian justice.
This crime bill would move us in the wrong direction. Who benefits from one-size-fits-all punishments? Who benefits from massive prison expansion? Who benefits from throwing more of Canada’s youth, poor, and mentally ill in prison?
It’s time we speak out together. This petition is an essential first step in a major campaign. Will you join us?
Click here to tell Justice Minister Rob Nicholson and your MP you want a new strategy for Canadian justice:
[6] Open letter to the Government opposing mandatory sentences from over 550 Canadian experts and public health professionals (Urban Health Research Initiative): http://uhri.cfenet.ubc.ca/content/view/90
[9] Rough Justice in America: Too many laws, too many prisoners – Never in the civilised world have so many been locked up for so little (The Economist): http://www.economist.com/node/16636027
[12] The cartoon is by Malcolm Mayes, in the Edmonton Journal.
The Harper Government in Canada wants to create Legislation similar to the Drug offenses in the US. Lets hope Canadians do not get coerced into this. Marijuana is not that bad. It has many uses medically and fewer violent crimes if any are committed because of it. Alcohol is far worse as far as crimes. Those who use Marijuana are non violent.
If a police officer had a choice of going into a room with 20 Marijuana users or 20 drunk people the room with the Marijuana uses would be a much safer room. Drunk people are much more violent and much more dangerous. Marijuana users would be listening to music and eating. They don’t even bother to argue they just enjoy themselves. Drunk people fight and argue and alcohol is addictive where as Marijuana is not.
So I have to say Harper’s bill is wrong on many counts. If anything Marijuana should be legalized and the Government could regulate it and make profits/taxes on it. Open stores to have it sold etc.
It would eliminate grow ops and many other problems now associated with Marijuana.
If individuals grew their own or buy it from a Government store there would be no need for dealers and all the other problems now faced by police at this time.
Then the police could spend their time looking for dangerous criminals.
It would save a lot of money and make a lot of money.
End of a lot of problems.
Check the link below and get some insight as to how Medical Marijuana helps people and it is safer then many Pharmaceuticals.
It will even get rid of a headache.
The lobby groups who want to prevent the legalization of Marijuana are the Pharmaceutical companies. Not because it is dangerous, but because it would cut into their profits.
Legalizing Marijuana would create a lot of jobs something we all can agree on is needed. Maybe the drinkers would take up smoking Marijuana and make the world a safer place especially for women who are beaten by their drunken spouses.
What’s wrong with Harper’s omnibus crime bill
By Paula Mallea
September 20, 2011
Prime Minister Harper will be launching his tough-on-crime agenda today. Our criminal justice system is by no means perfect, but the omnibus crime bill will send us back to a 19th century punishment model. Here are some reasons why Canadians need to speak out against this legislation.
The former U.S. drug czar (Asa Hutchinson) has encouraged Canada not to make the same mistakes the U.S. made. The two mistakes he cited were mandatory minimum sentences, and insufficient attention to rehabilitative programs.
1. The cost of the Harper crime agenda will be colossal, and a large part of it (some say most) will be borne by the provinces, who are responsible for implementing whatever the feds pass. So provinces and territories (many of them in elections as we speak) will be expected to pay for additional courts, clerks, prisons, Crown Attorneys, judges, sheriffs, court reporters and so on. And the numbers are high-$5 billion over 5 years for the one piece of legislation which was examined by the Parliamentary Budget Officer. The new drug sentences alone will increase numbers of offenders by a huge amount. The Corrections department is one of the few which is receiving huge increases in its budget as we speak.
2. Virtually all of the crime legislation is directed towards increasing punishment by way of more prison terms for more people and for longer. Virtually nothing in any of the legislation does anything to prevent crime (as the Conservatives claim), help victims (as they claim) or target guns, gangs, drugs and organized crime (as they claim). The Harper government’s stated objectives will not be met by the omnibus crime bill.
3. Other jurisdictions, notably the United States, have rejected the Harper approach. Newt Gingrich is fronting a group called Right on Crime which advocates for less incarceration. Ronald Reagan presided over a huge reduction in incarceration when he was governor of California. Maggie Thatcher refused to allow incarceration rates to rise in Britain. Many states are abolishing mandatory minimum sentences and reducing the proportion of sentences which must be served before release.
4. Canada is moving in the wrong direction, and the results will not be pretty. I predict there will be expanding deficits at all levels, an increase in misery for all parties, including offenders’ families and communities, and victims (who in fact advocate for improvements in preventive and rehabilitative programs). The picture becomes darker when you consider that up to 80 to 90 per cent of offenders in some institutions are addicts (mostly to alcohol), and up to 40 per cent have mental illnesses. A huge proportion are Aborignal people. Many offenders are homeless, illiterate, victims of sexual abuse, and so on. What is significant is that we have the means to deal with all of these conditions-we know how, and the resources required would be a fraction of the budget necessary to incarcerate so many new inmates. Dealing with these issues would not only reduce crime but would also make for a healthier community. Because the Conservatives are so concentrated on the punishment model, there will be no resources (and no inclination) to fund the programs necessary to deal with these fundamental problems.
5. Journalists continually state that the omnibus crime bill is considered necessary by the Harper government because the crime legislation was otherwise “unpassable” or because of “obstructive measures” taken by the opposition. This is demonstrably not true. The opposition never got a chance to oppose most of the crime legislation because it never came to a vote: most of the laws died on the order paper when Mr. Harper prorogued Parliament twice and when he called the 2008 election. Most of the rest of them were never brought forward in a timely manner.
The Conservatives have the majority they need to pass this legislation. The only thing that might give them pause would be a public groundswell against the law. If for no other reason than financial, we should be making our voices heard.
Paula Mallea, B.A., M.A., Ll.B, practised criminal law for 15 years in Toronto, Kingston, and Manitoba. She acted mainly as defence counsel, with a part-time stint as prosecutor, and spent hundreds of hours in penitentiaries representing inmates. She is a Research Associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. She is the author of The Fear Factor: Stephen Harper’s Tough On Crime Agenda and Lorimer Publishing will be releasing her book on the tough-on-crime agenda this fall.
ATHENS, Greece — Hundreds of rioting youths smashed and looted stores in central Athens on Wednesday during a big anti-government rally against painful new austerity measures that erupted into violence.
Outside parliament, demonstrators hurled chunks of marble and gasoline bombs at riot police, who responded with tear gas and stun grenades. Police said at least 14 officers were hospitalized with injuries. At least three journalists covering the demonstrations sustained minor injuries.
The violence spread across the city centre, as at least 100,000 people marched through the Greek capital on the first day of a two-day general strike that unions described as the largest protest in years.
Police and rioters held running battles through the narrow streets of central Athens, as thick black smoke billowed from burning trash and bus-stops.
Wednesday’s strike, which grounded flights, disrupted public transport and shut down shops and schools, came before a parliamentary vote late Thursday on new tax increases and spending cuts.
International creditors have demanded the reforms before they give Greece its next infusion of cash. Greece says it will run out of money in a month without the C8 billion ($11 billion) bailout money from its partners that use the euro and the International Monetary Fund.
Most of the protesters who converged in central Athens marched peacefully, but crowds outside of parliament clashed with police who tried to disperse them with repeated rounds of tear gas. A gasoline bomb set fire to a presidential guard sentry post at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier outside Parliament, while running clashes broke out in several side streets near the legislature and the capital’s main Syntagma Square.
Nearby, groups of hooded, masked protesters tore chunks of marble off building fronts with hammers and crowbars and smashed windows and bank signs. Scuffles also broke out among rioters and demonstrators trying to prevent youths from destroying storefronts and banks along the march route.
Vendors sold swimming goggles to rioters, who used them to ward off the tear gas.
Thousands of people watched the skirmishes, some standing on kiosk roofs to get a better view. Trash was strewn around the streets, and some protesters set clumps of it on fire.
In Greece’s second city of Thessaloniki, protesters smashed the facades of about 10 shops that defied the strike and remained open, as well as five banks and cash machines. Police fired tear gas and threw stun grenades.
All sectors — from dentists, hospital doctors and lawyers to shop owners, tax office workers, pharmacists, teachers and dock workers — walked off the job before a parliamentary vote Thursday on new austerity measures which include new taxes and the suspension of tens of thousands of civil servants.
Flights were grounded in the morning but some resumed at noon after air traffic controllers scaled back their strike plan from 48 hours to 12. Dozens of domestic and international flights were still cancelled. Ferries remained tied up in port, while public transport workers staged work stoppages but kept buses, trolleys and the Athens subway system running to help protesters.
In Parliament, Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos told lawmakers that Greeks had no choice but to accept the hardship.
“We have to explain to all these indignant people who see their lives changing that what the country is experiencing is not the worst stage of the crisis,” he said. “It is an anguished and necessary effort to avoid the ultimate, deepest and harshest level of the crisis. The difference between a difficult situation and a catastrophe is immense.”
About 3,000 police deployed in central Athens, shutting down two subway stations near parliament as protest marches began. Protesters banged drums and chanted slogans against the government and Greece’s international creditors who have pressured the country to push through rounds of tax hikes and spending cuts.
“We just can’t take it any more. There is desperation, anger and bitterness,” said Nikos Anastasopoulos, head of a workers’ union for an Athens municipality.
Other municipal workers said they had no option but to take to the streets.
“We can’t make ends meet for our families,” said protester Eleni Voulieri. “We’ve lost our salaries, we’ve lost everything and we’re in danger of losing our jobs.”
Demonstrations during a similar 48-hour strike in June left the centre of Athens convulsed by violence as rioters clashed with police on both days while deputies voted on another austerity package inside Parliament.
Piles of garbage festered on Athens street corners despite Tuesday’s government order to garbage crews to end their 17-day strike. Earlier in the week, private crews removed some trash from along the planned demonstration routes, but mounds remained on side streets, along some of the march routes and in city neighbourhoods.
Protesting civil servants have also staged rounds of sit-ins at government buildings, with some, including the Finance Ministry, under occupation for days.
Most stores in the city centre, including bakeries and kiosks were shut Wednesday. Several shop owners said they had received threats that their stores would be smashed if they attempted to open.
The measures to be voted on come after more than a year and a half of repeated spending cuts and tax increases. They include new tax hikes, further pension and salary cuts, the suspension on reduced pay of 30,000 public servants and the suspension of collective labour contracts.
A communist party-backed union has vowed to encircle Parliament Thursday in an attempt to prevent deputies from entering the building for the vote.
The reforms have been so unpopular that even some lawmakers from the governing Socialists have indicated they might vote against them.
Meanwhile, European countries are trying to work out a broad solution to the continent’s deepening debt crisis, before a weekend summit in Brussels. It became clear earlier this year that the initial bailout for Greece was not working as well as had been hoped, and European leaders agreed on a second, C109 billion ($151 billion) bailout. But key details of that rescue fund, including the participation of the private sector, remain to be worked out. Source
EU raids banks amid suspicions they colluded
Oct. 19, 2011
BRUSSELS, Belgium — The European Union’s competition watchdog said Wednesday it conducted unannounced inspections at several banks amid suspicions they may have colluded to manipulate euro interest rate derivatives.
The European Commission said it is looking into a possible cartel by companies active in the sector of derivatives linked to the Euro Interbank Offered Rate — a key interest-rate benchmark.
The Commission said the raids started on Tuesday, but didn’t name the firms whose premises it inspected.
There are trillions of euros in derivatives whose value is based on developments in the Euribor and they make up a significant slice of the profitable business of derivatives trading, which has grown exponentially in recent years.
The Euribor is set by a group of 44 banks and is based on the interest rates they charge for lending to other financial institutions.
Inspections, during which investigators collect documents that could aid their case, are an early step in EU competition probes and happen before the Commission starts an in-depth investigation into suspected cartels and other violations of EU competition law.
The inspections are another sign that competition watchdogs are stepping up their scrutiny of the financial sector as a result of the 2008 credit crunch and the European debt crisis.
Press reports earlier this year said that the U.S. Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission were looking into suspected manipulation of the London Interbank Offered Rate, which is a benchmark rate similar to the Euribor but used much more widely.
Earlier this year, the European Commission also opened an investigation into practices of some of the world’s largest banks in the market for credit default swaps, derivatives that act as a sort of insurance against default.Source
The US should be investigating their own banks including the Federal Reserve.
They lead to the downfall of Greece.
The International Monetary Fund is basically run by the US and other rich countries. It is a horrid creature that should be eliminated as should the World Bank. Both are nothing more then a dictatorship that imposed massive hardship on countries. The IMF Can Only Bring Misery.
For six decades, the World Bank and IMF have imposed policies, programs, and projects that:
Decimate women’s rights and devastate their lives, their families, and their communities;
Subjugate democratic governance and accountability to corporate profits and investment portfolios;
Trap countries in a cycle of indebtedness and economic domination;
Force governments to privatize essential services;
Put profits before peoples’ rights and needs;
Abet the devastation of the environment in the name of development and profit;
Institutionalize the domination of the wealthy over the impoverished – the new form of colonialism; and
Facilitate corporate agendas through the economic re-structuring of countries enduring conflict and occupation, such as East Timor, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
If the US can’t get you with the IMF, World Bank or Free Trade Agreements — they send in the CIA.
One way or the other they will make your lives miserable and even kill you to get what they want. They even start wars to get what they want.
One has to wonder how many problems are still created by the CIA in other countries. They can cause financial chaos to other countries as well. They manipulate elections in other countries and invent anything to overturn governments they do not like.
One has to wonder if those Masked folks in Greece that stir up violence, may be associated with the CIA. The US does not like Socialism. That is one of their tactics they use often.
This fellow has a number of Videos that can be watched I recommend them all so you can get some insight into what the CIA is really like. They have not changed over the years only now everything they do is kept secret and always chalked up to National Security so no one can find out what they are up to. Do take the time to watch as many of the Video with John in them. Then maybe you will understand just how the US destroys other countries.
John Stockwell – CIA’s War on Humans
Feb 13, 2008
John R. Stockwell is a former CIA officer who became a critic of United States government policies after serving in the Agency for thirteen years serving seven tours of duty. After managing U.S. involvement in the Angolan Civil War as Chief of the Angola Task Force during its 1975 covert operations, he resigned and wrote In Search of Enemies, a book which remains the only detailed, insider’s account of a major CIA “covert action.”
So look at the world around us today and you will notice nothing has changed only gotten worse and the US is still starting wars. They still interfere with other Governments. They still topple Governments they don’t like. Now they have more weapons like the IMF, World Bank, Free Trade, WTO etc.
I could bet a few dollars they have everything to do with the problems in Greece and many other EU countries deep in debt. Wars are also driving countries deep in debt.
Greek lawmakers vote in favour of new austerity bill
Oct. 20 2011
ATHENS, Greece — Greek lawmakers have passed a deeply resented austerity bill that has led to violent protests on the streets of Athens, despite some dissent from one Socialist lawmaker.
The new measures include pay and staff cuts in the civil service as well as pension cuts and tax hikes for all Greeks. The bill passed by majority vote in the 300-member parliament.
Former Labor Minister Louka Katseli voted against one article that scales back collective labour bargaining rights. She voted in favour of the overall bill, but Prime Minister George Papandreou expelled her from the party’s parliamentary group. The move whittles down his parliamentary majority to 153.
The vote came after violent demonstrations that left one person dead and 74 injured. Source
Who is protesting on Wall Street? Protesters speak up
NEW YORK — One is a Harvard graduate who was laid off from her publishing job. Another is a retired teacher. Both marched this week in lower Manhattan, protesting for the first time in their lives.
As the Occupy Wall Street protests expand and gain support from new sources, what began three weeks ago as a group of mostly young people camping out on the streets has morphed into something different. It’s now an umbrella movement for people of varying ages, life situations and grievances.
Karen Livecchia has what she calls two “fancy degrees,” including a master’s from New York University. The 49-year-old never thought she’d be chanting in the streets. But on Wednesday, she was collecting signatures at the march.
Nancy Pi-Sunyer also was drawn into the fray. The 66-year-old couldn’t protest during the civil rights movement or the Vietnam war. She wants her voice to be heard now.
Thousands of demonstrators take to the streets of major American cities, demonstrating against the financial system, inequality, the high jobless rate in the U.S. and ‘greedy’ corporations.
Police arrest a protester on New York’s Brooklyn Bridge during the Occupy Wall Street march, on Saturday, Oct. 1, 2011.
AP Photo/Stephanie Keith
The woman above really doesn’t look like much of a threat to society now does she?
This the typical American criminal these days. If you can’t shut them up then throw them in prison. Your tax dollars hard at work. Is this how you want you tax dollars spent? All she was doing was standing up for her rights as an American citizen and she was also standing up for your rights as well. The ones running Wall Street are the real criminals, not her.
Have you ever really though about how your tax dollars are wasted.
Arresting innocent people cost taxpayers a fortune. The cost of arresting the woman above will cost you the tax payer, about $20 to $30 thousand dollars or more. Inflation you know. All because she was standing up for your rights.
Bailouts cost the American tax payers a fortune.
War costs tax payers a fortune.
Corporations cost tax payers a fortune. Their pollution not only costs money to clean up, but it kills people. Try getting rid of a polluter in your neighborhood. The IMF and World Bank help polluting corporations into third world countries to steal resources, pollute the environment and steal the land. Nice bunch of criminals I must say. .
Free Trade agreements cost taxpayers a fortune and jobs. They also increase poverty anywhere they have been implemented. Free Trade agreements also give Corporations more power then Governments.
Not only do the corporations make money, the US politicians make a fortune on these things. They certainly know which stock options to buy to get rich now don’t they? The American Government is one of the most corrupt bunch of criminals you will find along with Wall Street.
Seems the protesters are not the criminals here. They are the ones who want to expose who the real criminals are.
Knowing what I know about the American corruption, my heart goes out to all the protesters.
Seems to me the protesters are the ones who took the time to get educated on the facts.
Education is suffering in the US and elsewhere. They are not teaching children as they should. The survey says and I have heard this thousands of times. Why did they not teach us this in school. The fact is they are not teaching you, because they do not want you to know the truth. They teach you only what they want you to know.
The stupider you are, the easier it is for them to manipulate you. If you want an education, well these days one has to educate themselves.
Police arrest Occupy Wall Street protesters on Brooklyn Bridge
Oct 2, 2011
Video courtesy: Daryl Lang
Occupy Wall Street protesters march from Liberty Plaza to the Brooklyn Bridge on the afternoon of Saturday, October 1, 2011. The arrests seen in this video happened between around 4:30 and 5 p.m. At least 700 people have been arrested, including a New York Times reporter.
The Saga of Jack Smith & His Arrest on the Brooklyn Bridge
All About Greed: ‘Corporations + Government = Fascism’
Occupy DC Targets Wars and Economy
Oct 7, 2011
Occupy DC campaign begins with demands to end militarism and for economic justice
United Against Drones Rally/March, Occupy Washington
On Oct. 7,2011, Human Rights activists staged a rally in down town Washington, DC, in front of the office of General Atomics
Maria Allwine at Freedom Plaza, Occupy Washington
US politicians, including President Barack Obama, have been calling on Europe to fix its debt crisis, amid fears it will have a negative impact on the fragile US economy.
But there is evidence that the Greek debt crisis began on Wall Street, at the hands of one controversial US bank.
According to former financial regulators, Goldman Sachs made a dozen derivative deals with the Greeks a decade ago, writing its debt off its balance sheet for a number of years.
They also say that Goldman and Greece were not the only ones working such transactions.
Al Jazeera’s Patty Culhane investigates the morality versus legality of who is to blame for the financial crisis that is scaring the world.
Teacher Patricia McAllister was crucified for daring to simply say outloud that Zionists controlled Wall Street while helping in an Occupy Wall Street demo in Los Angeles. She was fired for simply telling the truth. LA talkshow host Bill Handel said on his show just a few days earlier, quote, “My Tribe Controls Wall Street why should I be upset about that?” Of course, he wasn’t fired because he is part of the tribe that runs the media.
So, what are the facts? This video lays out the facts of the Zionist control of Wall Street and International finance like nothing else!
Help give this video to the world!
Ugandan farmer: ‘My land gave me everything. Now I’m one of the poorest’
Land tenure in Uganda is a subject of much dispute, and last year’s farming evictions have left 20,000 homeless
September 22 2011
By John Vidal
These people living close to Kicucula village claim to have been evicted from forest land in Mubende district, Uganda. Photograph: Simon Rawles/OxfamFrancis Longoli, a small farmer from Kiboga district of central Uganda, is tearful: “I remember my land, three acres of coffee, many trees – mangoes and avocados. I had five acres of bananas, 10 beehives, two beautiful permanent houses. My land gave me everything. People used to call me ‘omataka’ – someone who owns land. Now that is no more. I am one of the poorest now,” he says.
Longoli and his family of six lost everything last year when, with three months notice, the Ugandan government evicted him and thousands of others from the Mubende and Kiboga districts to make way for the UK-based New Forests Company to plant trees, to earn carbon credits and ultimately to sell the timber.
Today, the village school in Kiboga is a New Forests Company headquarters. More than 20,000 people have been made homeless and Longoli rents a small house in Lubaali village. He says he cannot go back for fear of being attacked.
“I no longer own any land. It’s impossible to feed my children – they have suffered so much. Some days all they eat is porridge from maize flour. When people can’t eat well their bodies become weak – there have been lots of cases of malaria and diarrhoea. Some days we don’t eat anything at all,” says Longoli.
Christine, a farmer in her mid-40s, who lived in Kiboga district before the evictions, says: “All our plantations were cut down – we lost the banana and cassava. We lost everything we had. They won’t let us back in to look for the things we left behind.”
Land tenure in Uganda is frequently disputed, with the government handing out parcels and then trying to take it back. In this case, the land was originally a government forest reserve and some of the people evicted claim they were given deeds by the Idi Amin government because their families fought for Britain in the second world war. Others say they had bought the land legally.
Their land claims were being considered by the Ugandan courts when, they allege, the army and police forced them out in several waves of violent evictions which took place up to last year.
NFC – which is 20% owned by HSBC bank and describes itself as a sustainable and socially responsible forestry company – has licenses to grow trees in Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique, and Rwanda. It strongly denies allegations that they had any involvement in any Ugandan evictions or violence, and told Oxfam: “There were no incidences of injury, physical violence, or destruction of property during the voluntary vacation process that have been brought to the attention of NFC.”
In a series of communications with Oxfam, the company says: “Evictions from government land – which go on in Uganda every day – are solely in the hands of the government and its designated authorities such as the Uganda Wildlife Authority, the National Forestry Authority, and the Ministry of Lands. We are expressly prohibited from dialogue and interaction from any illegal encroachers.”
They add that the company played no part in the evictions themselves. “The land clearances were voluntary and … the company played no role in them”.
Today, the people evicted from the land are desperate, living with relatives or having moved away from the area. They say they were not properly consulted, have been offered no adequate compensation, and have received no alternative land.
An Oxfam spokesman says: “They had schools, health centres, churches, permanent homes, and farms on which they grew crops to feed themselves and surpluses to sell at market. They paid taxes. Theirs were strong and thriving permanent communities.
“Land grabs are going under the radars of existing safeguards intended to protect vulnerable people. The New Forests Company describes itself as ethical and says it follows international standards, yet more than 20,000 people were evicted without meaningful consultation or compensation to make way for their plantations,” says Oxfam director Barbara Stocking.
“It’s not acceptable for companies to blame governments for shortfalls in their operations. Investors, no matter how noble they purport to be, cannot sweep aside the needs and rights of poor communities who depend on the land they profit from,” she says.
NFC responded with a statement saying it is taking Oxfam’s allegations “extremely seriously” and is conducting an “immediate and thorough” investigation.
“Our understanding of these resettlements is that they were legal, voluntary and peaceful and our first-hand observations of them confirmed this,” says the statement.
“This has been corroborated on a number of occasions by meticulous audits of the company by highly respected international organisations including the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) and the IFC (International Finance Corporation, part of World Bank). The FSC concluded that ‘officials consider Namwasa one of their most peaceful and successful experiences in encouraging illegal encroachers to voluntarily leave central forestry reserves and would like to use the model for controversial areas in the future’.” Source
So this is how the UK lets their corporations help to cause starvation in Africa.
They should be cutting pollution not stealing land and planting trees in another country.
20,000 more hungry Africans thanks UK greedy, profiteering, inhuman, thieves. Stay in your own country. Stop stealing land in other countries.
The startling figure still resonates in my memory. Some 25 years back, I remember reading a report in one of the major dailies which said that some 5,000 children die every day in India. Today morning, my attention therefore was automatically drawn to a news report: 1.83 million children die before fifth bithday every year: Report (Indian Express, Sept 8, 2010).
I immediately took out a pen and paper to find out the per day child mortality rate. I wanted to know whether the child mortality rate has come down, and by how much, in the last 25 years or so. My disappointment has grown. The calculations shows that every day 5,013 children are succumbing to malnutrition. Given that a half of all children in India are under-nourished as per the National Family Health Survey III (2005-06), of which over 5,000 die every day I think every Indian needs to hang his/her head in shame.
Globally, 14,600 children die every day. This means that India alone has the dubious distinction of having more than a third of the world’s child mortality. This is ironically happening at a time when food is rotting in the godowns.
Yes, India is surely an emerging economic superpower, but building an Empire over hungry stomachs! Mera Bharat Mahaan!!
A new global report “A fair Chance at Life” by the international child rights organisation Save the Children is not only a damming indictment of the supplementary nutrition programmes that have been running for several decades now, but also is an eye-opener in many ways. While it tells us how hollow the global claims under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are, nationally it shows us the stark hidden realities. A country which doesn’t get tired of patting itself in the back for creating an impressive list of 50 billionaires, and off and on does bask under the fictitious glow of Shining India, the dark underbelly remains deliberately hidden from the media glare.
Let us look at what the report says: “Of the 26 million children born in India every year, approximately 1.83 million died before their fifth birthday. “What these aggregate figures do not reveal are the huge inequities in mortality rates across the country, within States and between them, as well as between children in urban and rural areas.”
Half of these children actually die within a month of being born. In other words, nearly 2,500 children of those who die have not even survived for more than a month. This is an indication of not only the inability of the parents to provide adequate nutrition to their new born, but more than that is a reflection of the impoverished condition of the especially the mother. Does it not tell us to what extent poverty and hunger prevails in this country? Do we need to still work out more effective parameters to measure hunger and malnutrition? Do we really need to find a new estimate of people living below the poverty line (BPL)?
Madhya Pradesh tops the list, followed closely by Uttar Pradesh. The under-5 mortality rate in Kerala was 14 deaths per 1000 live births. This stood at a sharp contrast to Madhya Pradesh at 92 per 1000 and 91 per 1000 for Uttar Pradesh.
I am reproducing below a news report from the pages of The Hindu (Sept 8, 2010):
‘Children from poorest section 3 times more likely to die before age of 5 than those from high income groups’
Children from the poorest communities are three times more likely to die before they reach the age of 5 than those from high income groups, Save the Children, a non-governmental organisation has said.
In a global report titled A Fair Chance at Life, the organisation said the policy to lower child mortality in India and elsewhere appeared to focus on children from better-off communities, leaving out those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.
“The 41 percentage decline in child mortality over the last two decades masks a dangerous expansion of the child mortality gap between the richest and poorest families in India,” Save the Children CEO Thomas Chandy said.
Child mortality is often described as the best barometer of social and economic progress. Despite being one of the fastest growing economies, there has been no visible pattern between per capita income growth and the rate of reduction of child mortality rates. In 2008, 5.3 lakh children under 5 died in the lowest income quintile in comparison to 1.78 lakh among the wealthy quintile. The rate of decline between 2005-06 and 1997-98 among the lowest income quintile is 22.69 per cent, compared to 34.37 per cent among the high income quintile for the same period.
Of the 26 million children born in India every year, approximately 1.83 million died before their fifth birthday. “What these aggregate figures do not reveal are the huge inequities in mortality rates across the country, within States and between them, as well as between children in urban and rural areas,” Mr. Chandy said.
The under-5 mortality rate in Kerala was 14 deaths per 1000 live births. This stood at a sharp contrast to Madhya Pradesh at 92 per 1000 and 91 per 1000 for Uttar Pradesh.
“Every child has the right to survive and the Indian government has an obligation to protect them. Save the Children’s research shows that prioritising marginalised and excluded communities, especially in the States lagging behind, is one of the surest ways that India can reduce the number of children dying from easily preventable causes. The National Rural Health Mission, for example, should have a clear focus on social inclusion of Dalits and adivasis in terms of access to healthcare,” he said.
Save the Children’s report comes two weeks before a high-level U.N. summit in New York from September 20-22 to assess progress against the Millennium Development Goals.
By demonstrating a political will and the right policies, MDG4 could be achieved in India. The good schemes in place needed to be matched by effective implementation. And there was enough experience in India proving that low-cost interventions can make the difference between life and death for a child, the report said.
It was hard to know what to expect a half-year after the Haiti earthquakes. Driving through the town of Port Au Prince a few days ago, rubble seemed to have been merely swept off the streets, and into alleyways. Debris and garbage had simply shifted around the city, more out of sight, but still present. It was like a college kid, knowing his parents were coming to visit, sweeping things under the rug and throwing things into closets. Things were frighteningly familiar.
I looked out the window, expecting to see the most awful and indelible images that I remembered during the first days after the earthquake. The bodies stacked high, in front of homes with parents searching frantically for a place for their dead children. At that time, children were seen everywhere, doing the same for their deceased parents. Thankfully, those images are for the most part gone.
In medicine, we think of things in the acute phase: stop the bleeding. The intermediate phase: recovery and follow up. And, in the chronic phase, it is about rehabilitation and building up. The acute phase is coming to an end, but without adequate resources and money, the intermediate phase will never happen. Talking to large relief organizations, it seems they are planning for the long-term chronic rehabilitation of the country, which may explain why only a small percentage of the money donated has actually been put to use. (see the breakdown here by organization). The concern, though, is that rehabilitation cannot happen, unless the resources are there to let the patients, and the country adequately recover.
For a while, there was a venting of compassion. At General hospital, the largest public hospital in Haiti, there was at one point too many doctors and too many supplies. People saw the need, and they opened their pocket books and booked their flights. I was often asked, “what can I do to help?” I said “wait 6 months, because too many people will forget, yet the need will still be there.” When I visited General hospital yesterday, there was hardly anything happening there. The operating tables that were donated looked desolate, and the rooms were empty. A handful of diligent Haitian nurses, who haven’t been paid in months, were trying to do the best they could with hardly any resources.
The largest private hospital in the city, which serviced the small percentage of Haitians that could pay for their health care, has chains on the doors and is shut down for business. Six months later, the need is still here, and in many ways, things are worse than ever.
It is true that clean water now exists in many places, and the predicted widespread outbreak of disease hasn’t happened. There are food distribution stations in many of the larger camps, and even schools that are starting up this summer. It is also true that many amputees are now walking around the rough roads of Port Au Prince with newly obtained prosthetic legs. But, too much has remained the same.
I saw a 6 month old girl, born just before the earthquake, who lay dying at Bernard Mevs hospital. She developed an infection, that untreated, turned into meningitis. Her head became large, as fluid had started to build up inside her brain, a condition known as hydrocephalus. She didn’t receive antibiotics in time, and now she was beyond treatment. The same stupid story. Six months later. Needless deaths, despite the generosity of millions all over the world. Source
Haiti: Key data on earthquake emergency relief published by MSF
Living conditions remain dire for thousands of Haitians
Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Published 08 July 2010
Six months after the January 12 earthquake in Haiti, the international medical humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has published a report describing the organization’s largest ever emergency response. The report also describes the dire living conditions of Haitians today and provides an explanation of MSF’s commitment in years to come.
MSF’s medical work in Haiti has evolved during the past six months, from an emergency response to a wider range of medical and relief activities. “Haitians were the first to respond to this disaster and we have reinforced their effort with a massive aid intervention. Today, medical provision for Haitians has improved, and is certainly more accessible than before the earthquake, allowing poor people to receive proper health care,” explains MSF Head of Mission Stefano Zannini, who was already in Port-au-Prince when the earthquake killed and/or injured hundreds of thousands and left over a million people without shelter.
However, the situation for many Haitians is still hugely precarious, while frustration grows among people who are disappointed with the pace of rehabilitation. “There is a staggering gap between the enthusiasm and promises for aiding the victims of the earthquake in the early weeks, and the dire reality on the ground after half a year,” adds Zannini.
MSF’s report publishes figures on the scale of its relief intervention. Up to May 31, in the first 138 days following the disaster, MSF staff treated more than 173,000 people and performed over 11,000 surgical procedures. More than 81,000 Haitians received support to help them cope with their psychological trauma. MSF brought in almost 27,000 tents and distributed more than 35,000 relief kits.
In the report, MSF describes some of the choices which had to be made in the first few weeks following the earthquake. For example, the extremely high number of injuries forced teams to focus almost exclusively on the stabilisation of patients and emergency surgery at the expense of other crucial activities. Finding locations for temporary medical facilities was done in haste as there was little time for more in-depth assessments.
An extraordinary number of foreign aid workers had to be brought into the country quickly; two months after the earthquake MSF had over 350 international staff in Haiti, since many Haitian health workers were also victims of the earthquake. This put a huge strain on MSF’s human resources and management capacity. MSF was eventually able to reduce the number of foreign workers, as more Haitians were hired to work in the organization’s facilities. By the end of May, 93 percent of MSF staff-members on the ground were Haitians.
MSF also reports that, up to May 31, around C$120 million was received in donations from the public earmarked for Haiti relief. The organization spent $70 million by that same date, including more than $14 million on surgery, $5 million on maternal health (MSF helped deliver 3,700 babies) and over $11 million on shelter. MSF foresees that, by the end of the year, it will have spent around $118 million on assistance to the Haitian population.
Although there are uncertainties around the speed of reconstruction and the extent to which other organizations will still provide health care, MSF commits to continue working for the victims of the earthquake in years to come.
“Health care was already fragile in Haiti before January 12,” says Dr. Unni Karunakara, the International President of MSF. “The earthquake destroyed much of the medical services that were available. It will take many years before the country is back on its feet. MSF is determined to play our part in rebuilding health care for Haitians and will dedicate our staff and means to this task as required.”
As needs remain, Haiti must be given capacity to ensure access to medical care for its population
International aid must consider a direct financial support to the health system in Haïti. Decisions at the New York conference need to allow the Haitian health system to continue to address the population’s immediate medical needs.
Port-au-Prince/New York
While the majority of the Haitian population is still extremely vulnerable, the UN donor conference to be held in New York on 31 March must not take measures that would limit the access to health care of the population, says international medical organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
Since the earthquake of 12 January nearly all public and many private medical structures have offered free of charge health care. Meanwhile plans have been disclosed to progressively reinstate hospital fees as early as mid-April.
“Making access to health care contingent upon someone’s financial means would totally ignore the reality that we see in the streets and makeshift camps in Haiti,” said MSF emergency coordinator Karline Kleijer. “Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced and live in rickety huts made of plastic sheeting, tents or ruined houses, with one latrine for a few hundred people on average. Shelter, hygiene, water and medical care remain a priority need.
“Short term humanitarian needs remain huge and unmet, and the arrival of the rainy and hurricane seasons threatens to cause further deterioration of the present living conditions. We have already seen large parts of camps collapsing during the recent rains. The collapse or flooding of shelters and tents could force many of the displaced to move again.”
Respiratory infections and diarrheal diseases are today the two main diseases that MSF treats. Earthquake victims continue to need post-operative and rehabilitative care, physiotherapy as well as psychological counseling. In addition, the population at large needs obstetric, pediatric, and trauma care.
“Haitians must have access to an efficient health system,” declared Dr. Christophe Fournier, MSF international president. “Necessary financial resources for the health structures to function can not be drawn from the extremely precarious population.”
International aid must consider a direct financial support to the health system in Haïti. Decisions at the New York conference need to allow the Haitian health system to continue to address the population’s immediate medical needs.
MSF has been assisting Haitian communities since 19 years. Today, some 3,300 Haitian and international MSF staff are supporting government hospitals and run facilities on its own. Since the earthquake, MSF teams have performed more than 4,000 surgeries, provided psychological counseling to over 20,000 people, and treated 53,000 patients. MSF has distributed 14,000 tents and close to 20,000 non-food item kits (including kitchen and hygiene kits, jerry cans, blankets and plastic sheeting). MSF is funding its activities in Haiti exclusively with private donations and is therefore no stakeholder in the donor conference in New York.
Medical needs in Haiti remain high as MSF moves into next crucial phase
In response to the dire situation confronting people living in makeshift camps or on the street ten weeks after the quake, MSF is stepping up the distribution of tents and plastic sheeting, as well as blankets and hygiene and cooking kits.
HIGHLIGHTS
Ten weeks after the January 12 earthquake that left up to 300,000 people injured, medical needs remain immense in Haiti, and they continue to grow. A crucial phase has begun with thousands of injured people requiring long term medical care just as some of the health providers who responded to the initial emergency phase have begun to discharge patients and leave the country . ?MSF is expanding its capacity to care for the many wounded requiring extensive postoperative care – including secondary surgeries, physical therapy, rehabilitation, and mental healthcare – for at least the next year. In recent weeks, more than 200 patients have been referred to MSF medical facilities by other medical teams leaving the country. ? MSF is also focusing on primary health care, with the opening of new out-patient departments and the creation of additional capacity for secondary health services, including emergency obstetrics, intensive care for malnourished children, and inpatient care for paediatrics and adults.
In response to the dire situation confronting people living in makeshift camps or on the street ten weeks after the quake, MSF is stepping up the distribution of tents and plastic sheeting, as well as blankets and hygiene and cooking kits.
MSF activity specific to locations across Haiti HOSPITALS – SURGERY – POST OPERATIVE CARE
Port au Prince – Saint-Louis Hospital: Surgical activities are ongoing in a 200-bed capacity inflatable hospital, which includes two operating theaters. An additional operating room is planned for treating treat patients suffering from burns. At the moment, around 200 patients are hospitalized and 770 surgical operations have been performed since setup. The hospital provides complete post-operative care: medical and surgical follow up, physiotherapy, psychological and social care. The hospital aims to treat the same cases that were treated at the now destroyed facility of La Trinité: major traumas (road accident, gunshots, burn victims, etc.) and health care for victims of sexual violence.
Port au Prince – Choscal Hospital in Cité Soleil: MSF intervened in this Ministry of Health hospital initially focusing on earthquake-related trauma. There are two operating theaters for major surgery, one for minor surgery. MSF also works in the emergency room and the maternity ward. The hospital has a 100 bed capacity, all under tents as the building has been slightly damaged by the earthquake and patients are still afraid to get in. The team has rearranged the hospital into a general hospital serving an extremely precarious population. Psychological care continues for all patients and caretakers.
Since the earthquake, 2705 (1852 new cases and 853 dressing) emergency cases treated in the emergency room, 874 trauma (trauma, wounds and burns), 201 trauma due to violence (57 gun shot, other aggressions by knife, machete, stone, bottle,…), 718 surgical interventions, 91 major orthopedic interventions including 37 amputations and 222 wounds operations; 363 deliveries including 39 cesarean section. Still a daily average of about 2/3 violence-related injuries, including gunshot and machete wounds.
Port au Prince- Site Office du Tourisme: Site functional since February 22. At present, 40 patients are hospitalized and receiving post operative and medical care, mental health care, and physiotherapy.
Port au Prince- Site « Mickey », Crèche angle rue Christ Roi et Bourdon Site opened on January 19. Currently, 61 patients are hospitalized and receiving post operative and medical care, mental health care and physiotherapy. For the immediate term: maintaining the maximum post operative care capacity, following up minor surgery cases, reinforcement of mental health rehabilitation
Port au Prince – site Lycée with its 80 beds of post operative care, was closed. Patients were transferred to the OCB facilities.
Port-au-Prince – Bicentenaire: Post-op, emergency and surgical facility with two operating theaters and pediatric and obstetric services. Presently 41 patients hospitalized in the 77-bed structure. A total of 90 beds foreseen. Mental health services are also provided.
Carrefour Arts et Metiers orthopedic hospital: Around 40 surgical interventions are performed every day in this 135-bed trauma and post-op hospital, which houses two operating theaters, and one of the few x-ray machines in the city. Orthopedic surgery, skin grafts, and muscle flaps are being performed and post-op care and rehabilitation are provided. Currently, 80 patients are hospitalized. Rehabilitation care is offered to patients in collaboration with Handicap International. Psychological care is offered to patients and families.
Léogâne: 90-bed hospital. Maternity activities are increasing; 50 deliveries and three C-sections performed in the past week. .
Jacmel: Full outpatient and inpatient services are available under tents (81 beds) as the main hospital was badly damaged. Surgery is ongoing in the hospital’s operating theater (services offered; internal medicine, surgery, maternity, pediatrics, emergency). Mental health services are also provided.
POST-OPERATIVE CARE
Although a full range of post-operative care is offered in all MSF supported structures where surgery is performed, some sites are specifically dedicated to welcome patients after surgery.
Promesse: Post-op structure with an initial capacity of 50 beds. Handicap International physiotherapists are working in collaboration with MSF. 46 patients are currently hospitalised. Mental health care provided.
Delmas 30: The first 70 patients and their caretakers have been transferred to this new post-op tented center, from the inflatable hospital structure in Saint Louis. The center will have more than 100 beds for people needing physiotherapy and mental health support. They will be transferred in the middle of March to the MSF facility in the Port-au-Prince neighbourhood of Tabarre (capacity: 140 beds)
Sarthe: On February 23 MSF opened a new, a 203-bed post-operative center in a converted soft drink factory in the Sarthe area of Port-au-Prince (potential capacity of 300 beds). All patients from Chancerelle and Choscal who need further post-operative care (wound care, more specialised orthopaedic surgery, reconstruction surgery) were referred to this new structure. Up to now 150 patients were admitted. Handicap International physiotherapists are working in collaboration with MSF to optimize reeducation (including prosthesis for the amputee) and mental health support is provided as well.
SPECIALISED CARE : NEPHRO + NUTRITION + EMERGENCY OBSTETRICS
Port au Prince – General Hospital The nephrology team did an initial handover to the Ministry of Health, with donations of materials and three dialysis machines to the nephrology unit in the general hospital. Currently, 30 chronic patients are receiving dialysis. Another five dialysis machines has been installed recently to increase capacity of the unit. A nephrologist came for one week to give specific trainings.
Carrefour stabilisation center for malnutrition: Stabilization center and ambulatory feeding center for severely malnourished children. There are currently 22 children hospitalized.
Carrefour Maternity Hospital: MSF supports this Ministry of Health structure with staff, fuel and supplies to run 24hr maternity/emergency obstetrics services.
Isaie Jeanty, Emergency Obstetrics Hospital: MSF is working in collaboration with the Ministry of health for the maternity and emergency obstetric care in this 85-bed Ministry of Health hospital. This is the main referral hospital for Port-au-Prince for complicated and eclampsia cases. PRIMARY CARE
Port au Prince – Martissant: This MSF structure provides an emergency and stabilization center through an outpatient department and a 30-bed inpatient department. There is also a 15-bed maternity service. The center has seen more than 3892 consultations since the earthquake and 1967 dressings. More than 1000 trauma had been treated including 100 by violence.The team is preparing to move some patients back into the undamaged structure.
Port au Prince – Delmas 24: A new health center opened on February 15 in the Delmas area of Port-au-Prince. About 150 consultations are offered every day. MSF plans to open five out patient departments in total in the Delmas area (including in Saint Louis Hospital and Delmas 24).
Saint-Louis OPD and ambulatory: Opened February 27; 120 consultations/day. Follow up of post op in ambulatory ( dressing, physio, mental health…)
Les Collines: OPD will open March 10.
Fort National/poste Marchand: OPD will open March 15.
Port-au-Prince – Site “Mickey”, Crèche angle rue Christ Roi et Bourdon: Outpatient structure performing between 120 and 170 consultations per day.
Port-au-Prince – “Tourism”, in front of the Champ de Mars: Outpatient activities began February 15; average of 160 consultations per day.
Leogane, Dufort and region: OPD is operational in the city of Leogane on the site of Hopital Sainte Croix. At the Dufort fixed clinic site, approximately 250 consultations are carried out each day, with referrals to Leogane when required. In addition, MSF teams are operating mobile clinic activities in 20 locations, between Gressier and Petit Goave. In total, 2,130 consultations were carried out last week.
Carrefour Feuille: A team of one nurse, three doctors and one midwife is running a tent clinic in a camp for 9,000 homeless people in the area. Main pathologies are now diarrhea, skin diseases, upper respiratory infections, fever, gyneco cases, traumas and increasing requests for psychological counseling. An average of 130 consultations are carried out per day. The team is performing dressing changes and providing vaccinations. Mental health services are also provided.
Carrefour, Village Grace IDP camp: The basic health care unit includes an outpatient department, antenatal and post natal care and a mental health component in a site that is home to 15,000 displaced persons. 150 patients are seen daily. 250 dressings are done per week. Vaccination campaign for DTP and measles was carried out last week. Psychological care is offered to patients and families.
Carrefour, International Grace Hospital: A new hospital, located next to Grace camp, will offer out-patient services by the end of this month. Other planned activities include pediatric care and emergency services.
Carrefour, Shikina clinic, Waney 87. An out-patient health center offering basic health care, antenatal and post natal care, as well as mental health services. This is an urban area with many displaced are living in small groups.
Carrefour, outreach activities: A MSF team is working in a number of sites in the Carrefour area, including in displaced persons camps, homes for the elderly, clinics and orphanages.
Petionville Golf Club Camp (Golf course): A health care clinic offering basic health care and ante-natal care to pregnant women, referral services and psycho social counseling in this camp where 40,000 people are estimated to live. About 150 consultations have been provided every day (ANC, PNC as well as mental health).
MENTAL HEALTH
Psychological care is routinely offered to patients who have been through major surgery in MSF supported structures. But there are other mental health activities targetting specific groups.
Sarthe + Choscal + Martissant : A team of psychologists is still focusing on the patients and the caretakers inside the three hospitals, but as also shifted towards providing counseling to displaced people living in makeshift camps around the structures.
Carrefour, Grace Village IDP camp: Psychological care (individual and group sessions) is offered in the camp, through the clinic and through outreach workers who work in the camp as well as in the surrounding neigborhoods.
Carrefour, MSF Field hospital: A team of psychologists is supporting the patients.
Delmas, Petion Ville Club IDP camp: Psychological care is offered in the camp through individual sessions and group councelling.
Bicentenaire, Promess, Jacmel and Carrefour Feuille: Mental health activites taking place in MSF facilities in all these locations. A team of Payasos sin Fronteras (Clowns Without Borders) worked in collaboration with MSF – their project has now finished.
NON FOOD ITEM DISTRIBUTIONS
Port au Prince – Ecole Saint Louis: 1,800 tents distributed in the camp near the inflatable hospital to an estimated 8,500 people. NFI (hygiene and cooking sets) will be distributed in the coming days to the same population.
Grand Goàve: 2,638 complete family kits distributed.
Petit Goave: complete family kits and tents for 364 families
Grace Village IDP camp: NFI kits distributed to 3,000 families (kit = 2 jerrycans, bucket, hygiene kit, plastic sheeting or tent, 6 pieces of soap and a hygiene kit)
Carrefour: 1,800 NFI kits to IDPs at different sites.
Port au Prince – Delmas 33: 200 NFI kits to IDPs at Solidarity site and 200 NFI kits to Delmas 33 “future hospital” site.
Leogane: Distribution of 1,550 NFI kits in rural areas in the periphery of Leogane. 5,000 additional NFI distributions planned for next week (plastic sheeting instead of tents), accompanying mobile clinics.
Jacmel:Distribution of kits to more than 1,800 families.
Cité Soleil: 2954 tents were distributed in several camps spread within Cité Soleil slums. Still ongoing with additional NFI kits distribution to come.
WATER AND SANITATION
Marrtissant, Cite Soleil, Chancerelle: Water distribution is continuing via 15 bladders, including one in Martissant, 11 around Cité Soleil, one in Chancerelles, and three in Sarthe, focusing on IDPS close to the medical facilities. MSF has also undertaken the cleaning and emptying of community latrines inside the slum of Cité Soleil, which had been backed up for a prolonged period.
Carrefour, Grace Village Camp: MSF is providing 76m3/day water for 15,000 IDPs and constructing 45 latrines. Additionally, 45 showers will be constructed and 15 Portocabs have been installed..
Chancerelle, Aviation camp: 50 latrines, 50 showers and 20 washing places under construction. Water provided by MSF to part of camp. Installing 30,000 liter tank.
Carrefour, Child detention center: Ten latrines and showers under construction; eight portocabs installed in the meantime.
Carrefour, Joseph Janvier camp: maintenance of 20 existing latrines for 1,500 IDPs.
Carrefour, various sites: chlorination treatment of tanks/wells and small interventions in other areas. Chancerelle, Aviation camp: 50 latrines, 50 showers and 20 washing places under construction. Water provided by MSF to part of camp. Installing 30,000 liter tank.
Leogane (periphery): Water distribution: target of 200,000 litres per day. Will install two latrine blocks in gathering spots, and, if used, will increase numbers. Again, water and sanitation activities will be in support of mobile clinics and around MSF hospital structures.
Port au Prince – Mickey: Water distribution of 80,000L/day
Port au Prince – Ecole Saint Louis: Water and sanitation work (latrines) for estimated 7,000 IDPs.
Jacmel: MSF installed a water bladder, drinking points, and ten latrines in St. Michel Hospital.
Grand Goave: Sanitation facilities established in four camps: Lifeline, Park Ferrus, Servants et Tit Paradise: 4-6 latrines per block, showers, bladders, and seven water distribution sites for a total of 7,000 beneficiaries.
Port au Prince – In Petionville and Carrefour Feuille: portable or fixed latrines, portable showers, waste areas and water bladders were installed for a total population of 31,800 people. MSF has carried out out water storage and distribution, constructed washing areas, showers, latrines, waste areas and hygiene promotion in the following camps :
Place Boyer, Place St. Pierre, Marie Therese, Hospital Sanatorium, Campeche, Tapis Rouge, Pinchinat (Jacmel).
Haiti: Public Health Crisis Looming and Where is Media?
By Georgianne Nienaber
March 29 2010
The rainy season is about to hit earthquake-ravaged Haiti. The meteorological forecast for next week calls for thunderstorms beginning this Wednesday, lasting at least through the following Tuesday, and Dr. Jim Wilson is worried. Wilson is the Executive Director of Praecipio International, which is the Haiti Epidemic Advisory System (HEAS), based in Petionville-Port au Prince, Haiti. Wilson is also internationally known as the person who identified the H1N1 outbreak in Mexico and was a key player and founder of ARGUS, a global detection and tracking system for the early detection of biological events. He identified SARS outbreaks, H1NI, Marburg hemorrhagic fever, and issued the first warning of H1N1 resurgence in the United States in the summer of 2009. Wilson has been warning about the increase in diarreal disease in Haitian infants, and his warning is falling on deaf ears in the mainstream media.
For anyone who has been to Haiti and observed ground conditions there, the reasons are obvious. During the week of March 12 we were in some of the IDP camps. After a minor rainstorm floodwaters caused the overflow of pit latrines, bringing raw sewage into the camps and contaminating local water sources. This was in the camps that had pit latrines. A camp of 5,500 people near the slums of Cite Soleil had no latrines or sanitation of any sort. Feces, vomit and urine were everywhere in the surrounding bush. Obviously, contact with raw sewage greatly increases the chance of exposure to waterborne pathogens that cause diarrheal disease. Prior to the January 12th earthquake, diarrheal disease was already a leading cause of illness and death for children in Haiti. Now, children and adults are living in “shelters” that in the best conditions amount to salvaged pieces of tin providing makeshift “roofs,” to tattered pieces of plastic held together with sticks. The USAID “fact sheet” about tent material would be laughable if the consequences were not so tragic.
On March 11, a USAID/OFDA flight delivered 750 rolls of plastic sheeting to Haiti. To date, USAID/OFDA has provided 15,480 rolls of plastic sheeting to meet post-earthquake shelter needs, benefiting approximately 774,000 people. The ongoing distribution of USAID/OFDA-funded plastic sheeting supports Shelter Cluster efforts to provide shelter materials to approximately 240,000 households before the likely June onset of the hurricane season.
Here is a video of what it is like to live under plastic sheeting. Imagine this scenario in the hurricane season.
This video was taken on March 12, 2010.
The same “fact sheet” indicates that the United States has provided $769,948,358 in aid to Haiti. Where it has gone is anyone’s guess. By the time Freedom of Information Act requests have been filed and freelance investigative journalists have done their homework, it will be too late to assist the 1.3 million estimated homeless. Infants will start dying by the thousands before the media takes note, and an outbreak of even more serious waterborne disease will likely occur.
The lies are almost frightening in the Machiavellian planning and presentation. Drive along the main roads and you will see “camps” of moderate white tents, set in orderly rows with the banners of NGOs prominently displayed. This is what you will likely see on CNN.
Take a little time to venture off the beaten path–you will not have to go far–and the reality hits you right between the eyes.
Wilson suggests that there is another area of concern that has not been examined by health officials here in the States and in Haiti.
The reason for this high level of concern is obvious to all of us who are working on the ground. An extension of that concern may be seen when considering the fragile nature of the current ad hoc medical infrastructure in the quake-affected areas. It is our assessment this infrastructure comprised mainly of volunteers is easily overwhelmed by a sudden influx of patients, particularly pediatric patients. The higher the clinical acuity, the more easily it is to overwhelm.
Dr. Wilson is being mild in his public comments. Having seen this
Amputate a leg and send someone home. To what? Fix a broken arm and send a child, homeless, to an IDP camp where there is seldom a doctor or food to be found.
We found this stash of “medical supplies” at an ad hoc camp of 2500 outside of Leogane.
This ad hoc infrastructure is both limited and easily overwhelmed. Because of these conditions, rapid identification of diarrheal disease hot spots when they emerge is critical, so that aid can be moved quickly to prevent further spread of disease and exhaustion of medical resources.
Is Haiti prepared? Probably not.
There are 800,000 doses of the oral rehydration agent, Pedialyte, stored, but it will not be enough if a large outbreak occurs. Infants can die within 24 hours if not given the proper palliative care. There are not enough oral and IV antibiotics in-country. Even if drugs and rehydration kits were freely available, there is not an adequate distribution system in place to deliver supplies and no one to coordinate at many of the camps, except those located with the guarded compounds of the NGOs. Haitian mothers have not been told how to make simple rehydration solutions of salts and sugars.
The current Haitian public health surveillance consists of forms submitted to the Haiti Ministry of Health once a week and an under-developed network of sites to support laboratory testing.
Dr. Wilson suggests that along with the forms, health workers share information about the types of health events they are witnessing.
This is referred to as “informal surveillance,” and we offer the following Google group, the “Haiti Epidemic Advisory System” and the InSTEDD-supported SMS/text messaging alert system called Geochat to facilitate communication among us. In this Google group we will be sharing insights into what to look for and examples of informal surveillance in action. Please note this group is only for ground-based Haiti responders. The link to the Google group may be found here, and instructions for how to sign up for the SMS/text messaging Geochat service is found on the group website.
Our team encountered the Haitian Minister of Health, Dr. Alex Larsen, in Petionville one evening. It was a chance encounter, since all of the government offices were destroyed during the quake and officials who are still alive are hard to find.
We asked the purple-shirted chain-smoking minister if we might have a conversation with him after he finished his conversation and dinner. He said “yes,” but left without even a goodbye or “we will talk later.” Maybe Anderson Cooper can get him to open up. If he can find him.
A journalist friend in Rwanda, Patrick Bigabo, sent me a message on FACEBOOK that pretty much sums up the state of media affairs with regard to Haiti.
“The problem with public affairs reporting in poor nations is that for the western media there is no news unless horror is ongoing. Real media has vanished.”
“With Cheap Food Imports, Haiti Can’t Feed Itself”
March 21 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The earthquake not only smashed markets, collapsed warehouses and left more than 2.5 million people without enough to eat. It may also have shaken up the way the developing world gets food.
Decades of inexpensive imports – especially rice from the U.S. – punctuated with abundant aid in various crises have destroyed local agriculture and left impoverished countries such as Haiti unable to feed themselves.
While those policies have been criticized for years in aid worker circles, world leaders focused on fixing Haiti are admitting for the first time that loosening trade barriers has only exacerbated hunger in Haiti and elsewhere.
They’re led by former U.S. President Bill Clinton – now U.N. special envoy to Haiti – who publicly apologized this month for championing policies that destroyed Haiti’s rice production. Clinton in the mid-1990s encouraged the impoverished country to dramatically cut tariffs on imported U.S. rice.
“It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake,” Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 10. “I had to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did; nobody else.”
Clinton and former President George W. Bush, who are spearheading U.S. fundraising for Haiti, arrive Monday in Port-au-Prince. Then comes a key Haiti donors’ conference on March 31 at the United Nations in New York.
Those opportunities present the country with its best chance in decades to build long-term food production, and could provide a model for other developing countries struggling to feed themselves.
“A combination of food aid, but also cheap imports have … resulted in a lack of investment in Haitian farming, and that has to be reversed,” U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes told The Associated Press. “That’s a global phenomenon, but Haiti’s a prime example. I think this is where we should start.”
Haiti’s government is asking for $722 million for agriculture, part of an overall request of $11.5 billion.
That includes money to fix the estimated $31 million of quake damage to agriculture, but much more for future projects restoring Haiti’s dangerous and damaged watersheds, improving irrigation and infrastructure, and training farmers and providing them with better support.
Haitian President Rene Preval, an agronomist from the rice-growing Artibonite Valley, is also calling for food aid to be stopped in favor of agricultural investment.
Today Haiti depends on the outside world for nearly all of its sustenance. The most current government needs assessment – based on numbers from 2005 – is that 51 percent of the food consumed in the country is imported, including 80 percent of all rice eaten.
The free-food distributions that filled the shattered capital’s plazas with swarming hungry survivors of the Jan. 12 earthquake have ended, but the U.N. World Food Program is continuing targeted handouts expected to reach 2.5 million people this month. All that food has been imported – though the agency recently put out a tender to buy locally grown rice.
Street markets have reopened, filled with honking trucks, drink sellers clinking bottles and women vendors crouched behind rolled-down sacks of dry goods. People buy what’s cheapest, and that’s American-grown rice.
The best-seller comes from Riceland Foods in Stuttgart, Arkansas, which sold six pounds for $3.80 last month, according to Haiti’s National Food Security Coordination Unit. The same amount of Haitian rice cost $5.12.
“National rice isn’t the same, it’s better quality. It tastes better. But it’s too expensive for people to buy,” said Leonne Fedelone, a 50-year-old vendor.
Riceland defends its market share in Haiti, now the fifth-biggest export market in the world for American rice.
But for Haitians, near-total dependence on imported food has been a disaster.
Cheap foreign products drove farmers off their land and into overcrowded cities. Rice, a grain with limited nutrition once reserved for special occasions in the Haitian diet, is now a staple.
Imports also put the country at the mercy of international prices: When they spiked in 2008, rioters unable to afford rice smashed and burned buildings. Parliament ousted the prime minister.
Now it could be happening again. Imported rice prices are up 25 percent since the quake – and would likely be even higher if it weren’t for the flood of food aid, said WFP market analyst Ceren Gurkan.
Three decades ago things were different. Haiti imported only 19 percent of its food and produced enough rice to export, thanks in part to protective tariffs of 50 percent set by the father-son dictators, Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier.
When their reign ended in 1986, free-market advocates in Washington and Europe pushed Haiti to tear those market barriers down. President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, freshly reinstalled to power by Clinton in 1994, cut the rice tariff to 3 percent.
Impoverished farmers unable to compete with the billions of dollars in subsidies paid by the U.S. to its growers abandoned their farms. Others turned to more environmentally destructive crops, such as beans, that are harvested quickly but hasten soil erosion and deadly floods.
There have been some efforts to restore Haiti’s agriculture in recent years: The U.S. Agency for International Development has a five-year program to improve farms and restore watersheds in five Haitian regions. But the $25 million a year pales next to the $91.4 million in U.S.-grown food aid delivered just in the past 10 weeks.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization also distributed 28 tons of bean seeds in mountainous areas this month, with plans this week to distribute 49 tons of corn.
The G8 group of the world’s wealthiest nations pledged $20 billion for farmers in poor countries last year. The head of the FAO called this week for some to be given to Haiti.
President Barack Obama’s administration has pledged to support agriculture in developing nations. U.S. Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana has sponsored legislation to create a White House Global Food Security coordinator to improve long-term agriculture worldwide, with a budget of $8.5 billion through 2014.
Even Haiti’s most powerful food importers have joined the push for locally produced food.
“I would prefer to buy everything locally and have nothing to import,” said businessman Reginald Boulos, who is also president of Haiti’s chamber of commerce.
But one group staunchly opposes reducing food exports to Haiti: the exporters themselves.
“Haiti doesn’t have the land nor the climate … to produce enough rice,” said Bill Reed, Riceland’s vice president of communications. “The productivity of U.S. farmers helps feed countries which cannot feed themselves.”
China Friday retorted U.S. criticism by publishing its own report on the U.S. human rights record.
“As in previous years, the (U.S.) reports are full of accusations of the human rights situation in more than 190 countries and regions including China, but turn a blind eye to, or dodge and even cover up rampant human rights abuses on its own territory,” said the Information Office of the State Council in its report on the U.S. human rights record.
The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009 was in retaliation to the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2009 issued by the U.S. Department of State on March 11.
The report is “prepared to help people around the world understand the real situation of human rights in the United States,” said the report.
The report reviewed the human rights record of the United States in 2009 from six perspectives: life, property and personal security; civil and political rights; economic, social and cultural rights; racial discrimination; rights of women and children; and the U.S.’ violation of human rights against other countries.
It criticized the United States for taking human rights as “a political instrument to interfere in other countries’ internal affairs, defame other nations’ image and seek its own strategic interests.”
China advised the U.S. government to draw lessons from the history, put itself in a correct position, strive to improve its own human rights conditions and rectify its acts in the human rights field.
This is the 11th consecutive year that the Information Office of China’s State Council has issued a human rights record of the United States to answer the U.S. State Department’s annual report.
“At a time when the world is suffering a serious human rights disaster caused by the U.S. subprime crisis-induced global financial crisis, the U.S. government still ignores its own serious human rights problems but revels in accusing other countries. It is really a pity,” the report said.
Spying on citizens
While advocating “freedom of speech,” “freedom of the press” and “Internet freedom,” the U.S. government unscrupulously monitors and restricts the citizens’ rights to freedom when it comes to its own interests and needs, the report said.
The U.S. citizens’ freedom to access and distribute information is under strict supervision, it said.
According to media reports, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) started installing specialized eavesdropping equipment around the country to wiretap calls, faxes, and emails and collect domestic communications as early as 2001.
The wiretapping program was originally targeted at Arab-Americans, but soon grew to include other Americans.
After the September 11 attack, the U.S. government, in the name of anti-terrorism, authorized its intelligence authorities to hack into its citizens’ mail communications, and to monitor and erase any information that might threaten the U.S. national interests on the Internet through technical means, the report said.
Statistics showed that from 2002 to 2006, the FBI collected thousands of phones records of U.S. citizens through mails, notes and phone calls.
In September 2009, the country set up an Internet security supervision body, further worrying U.S. citizens that the U.S. government might use Internet security as an excuse to monitor and interfere with personal systems.
The so-called “freedom of the press” of the United States was in fact completely subordinate to its national interests, and was manipulated by the U.S. government, the report said.
At yearend 2009, the U.S. Congress passed a bill which imposed sanctions on several Arab satellite channels for broadcasting contents hostile to the U.S. and instigating violence.
Racial discrimination a chronic problem
Racial discrimination is still a chronic problem of the United States, the report said.
Black people and other minorities are the most impoverished groups in the United States.
According to a report issued by the U.S. Bureau of Census, the real median income for American households in 2008 was 50,303 U.S. dollars, but the median incomes of Hispanic and black households were roughly 68 percent and 61.6 percent of that of the non-Hispanic white households.
And the median income of minority groups was about 60 to 80 percent of that of majority groups under the same conditions of education and skill background, the report added.
Ethnic minorities have been subject to serious racial discrimination in employment and workplace, the report said.
Minority groups bear the brunt of the U.S. unemployment. According to news reports, the U.S. unemployment rate in October 2009 was 10.2 percent. The jobless rate of the U.S. African-Americans jumped to 15.7 percent, that of the Hispanic rose to 13.1 percent and that of the white was 9.5 percent, the USA Today reported.
The U.S. minority groups face discriminations in education. According to a report issued by the U.S. Bureau of Census, 33 percent of the non-Hispanic white has college degrees, proportion of the black was only 20 percent and Hispanic was 13 percent.
Racial discrimination in law enforcement and judicial system is very distinct. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, by the end of 2008, 3,161 men and 149 women per 100,000 persons in the U.S. black population were under imprisonment.
And a report released by New York City Police Department said that of the people involved in police shootings whose ethnicity could be determined in 2008, 75 percent were black, 22 percent were Hispanic; and 3 percent were white.
Ethnic hatred crimes are frequent. According to statistics released by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, a total of 7,783 hatred crimes occurred in 2008 in the United States, 51.3 percent of which were originated by racial discrimination and 19.5 percent were for religious bias and 11.5 percent were for national origins.
Widespread violent crimes
Widespread violent crimes in the United States posed threats to the lives, properties and personal security of its people, the report said.
In 2008, U.S. residents experienced 4.9 million violent crimes, 16.3 million property crimes and 137,000 personal thefts, and the violent crime rate was 19.3 victimizations per 1,000 persons aged 12 or over.
About 30,000 people die from gun-related incidents each year. According to an FBI report, there had been 14,180 murder victims in 2008, the report said.
Campuses became an area worst hit by violent crimes as shootings spread there and kept escalating. The U.S. Heritage Foundation reported that 11.3 percent of high school students in Washington D.C. reported being “threatened or injured” with a weapon while on school property during the 2007-2008 school year.
Abuse of power
The country’s police frequently impose violence on the people and abuse of power is common among U.S. law enforcers, the report said,
Over the past two years, the number of New York police officers under review for garnering too many complaints was up 50 percent.
In major U.S. cities, police stop, question and frisk more than a million people each year, a sharply higher number than just a few years ago.
Prisons in the United State are packed with inmates. About 2.3 million were held in custody of prisons and jails, the equivalent of about one in every 198 persons in the country, according to the report.
From 2000 to 2008, the U.S. prison population increased an average of 1.8 percent annually.
The basic rights of prisoners in the United States are not well-protected. Raping cases of inmates by prison staff members are widely reported, the report said.
According to the U.S. Justice Department, reports of sexual misconduct by prison staff members with inmates in the country’s 93 federal prison sites doubled over the past eight years.
According to a federal survey of more than 63,000 federal and state inmates, 4.5 percent reported being sexually abused at least once during the previous 12 months.
Poverty leads to rising number of suicides
The report said the population in poverty was the largest in 11 years.
The Washington Post reported that altogether 39.8 million Americans were living in poverty by the end of 2008, an increase of 2.6 million from that in 2007. The poverty rate in 2008 was 13.2 percent, the highest since 1998.
Poverty led to a sharp rise in the number of suicides in the United States. It is reported that there are roughly 32,000 suicides in the U.S. every year, double the cases of murder, said the report.
Workers’ rights not properly guaranteed
Workers’ rights were seriously violated in the United States, the report said.
The New York Times reported that about 68 percent of the 4,387 low-wage workers in a survey said they had experienced reduction of wages and 76 percent of those who had worked overtime were not paid accordingly.
The number of people without medical insurance has kept rising for eight consecutive years, the report said.
Data released by the U.S. Census Bureau showed 46.3 million people were without medical insurance in 2008, accounting for 15.4 percent of the total population, comparing with 45.7 million people who were without medical insurance in 2007, which was a rise for the eighth year in a row.
Women, children frequent victims of violence
Women are frequent victims of violence and sexual assault in the United States, while children are exposed to violence and living in fear, the report said.
It is reported that the United States has the highest rape rate among countries which report such statistics. It is 13 times higher than that of England and 20 times higher than that of Japan.
Reuters reported that based on in-depth interviews on 40 servicewomen, 10 said they had been raped, five said they were sexually assaulted including attempted rape, and 13 reported sexual harassment.
It is reported that 1,494 children younger than 18 nationwide were murdered in 2008, the USA Today reported.
A survey conducted by the U.S. Justice Department on 4,549 kids and adolescents aged 17 and younger between January and May of 2008 showed, more than 60 percent of children surveyed were exposed to violence within the past year, either directly or indirectly.
Trampling upon other countries ‘ sovereignty, human rights
The report said the United States with its strong military power has pursued hegemony in the world, trampling upon the sovereignty of other countries and trespassing their human rights.
As the world’s biggest arms seller, its deals have greatly fueled instability across the world. The United States also expanded its military spending, already the largest in the world, by 10 percent in 2008 to 607 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 42 percent of the world total, the AP reported.
At the beginning of 2010, the U.S. government announced a 6.4-billion-U.S. dollar arms sales package to Taiwan despite strong protest from the Chinese government and people, which seriously damaged China’s national security interests and aroused strong indignation among the Chinese people, it said.
The wars of Iraq and Afghanistan have placed heavy burden on American people and brought tremendous casualties and property losses to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the report.
Prisoner abuse is one of the biggest human rights scandals of the United States, it said
An investigation by U.S. Justice Department showed 2,000 Taliban surrendered combatants were suffocated to death by the U.S. army-controlled Afghan armed forces, the report said.
The United States has been building its military bases around the world, and cases of violation of local people’s human rights are often seen, the report said.
The United States is now maintaining 900 bases worldwide, with more than 190,000 military personnel and 115,000 relevant staff stationed.
These bases are bringing serious damage and environmental contamination to the localities. Toxic substances caused by bomb explosions are taking their tolls on the local children, it said.
It has been reported that toward the end of the U.S. military bases’ presence in Subic and Clark Philippines, as many as 3,000 cases of raping local women had been filed against the U.S. servicemen, but all were dismissed, according to the report.
A new report from the U.N. Children’s Fund says the United States and Britain are the worst countries in the industrialized world in which to be a child. UNICEF says an examination of 40 factors, such as poverty, deprivation, happiness, relationships, and risky or bad behavior puts the United States and Britain at the bottom of a list of 21 economically developed nations.
The UNICEF report sought to assess children’s well-being in developed countries by measuring a number of factors, including health, education, poverty, family relationships, and bad or risky behavior. Children were also asked to say whether they were happy.
In the overall table of children’s well-being, the Netherlands comes out on top, followed closely by the Scandinavian countries, which also have highly developed welfare systems. At the bottom are the United States at No. 20, and Britain at No. 21.
It’s not that developed welfare states necessarily have happier children, says David Parker of UNICEF.
“I think what we know from history in the U.S.,” Parker says, “is that it’s not necessarily how the welfare is provided but the nature of the support. One of the key things is that the role of government is important, but the entire society must have at its heart the idea of improving child well-being.”
The United States fared worst of all 21 countries in health and safety, measured by rates of infant mortality and accidents and injuries.
The United States and Britain were lowest overall in the category of behavior and risks, meaning that American and British children are more likely to use drugs, drink alcohol and be sexually active than children elsewhere.
Professor Jonathan Bradshaw from the University of York in England led the research into the project. He was scathing about the failures of successive British governments.
“We’ve failed to invest in child health, in child education, in child care,” Bradshaw says. “It’s the result of neglect, which other countries have not done… they’ve just spent more on their children, despite the fact they’re not as rich as we are.”
In almost all the categories, poorer nations such as Poland and the Czech Republic fared better than the United States and Britain.
1,000 days into the Israeli blockade and Palestinian youngsters are denied medical help, education and any hope of a decent future
By Rachel Shields
March 14 2010
Omsyatte, 12, in pink, and her family at the grave of her brother, Ibrahim, who was one of the 1,400 Palestinian victims of the 2008 Israeli military offensive against Gaza
Omsyatte adjusts her green school uniform and climbs gingerly on to a desk at the front of the classroom. The shy 12-year-old holds up a brightly coloured picture and begins to explain to her classmates what she has drawn. It is a scene played out in schools all over the world, but for one striking difference: Omsyatte’s picture does not illustrate a recent family holiday, or jolly school outing, but the day an Israeli military offensive killed her nine-year-old brother and destroyed her home.
“Here is where they shot my brother Ibrahim, God bless his soul. And here is the F16 plane that threw rockets into the house and trees, and here is the tank that started to shoot,” she says, to a round of applause from the other children. The exercise is designed to help the pupils at the school come to terms with the warfare that has dominated their short lives; particularly the horrors of the 2008 Israeli military offensive Operation Cast Lead, which killed 1,400 Palestinians, and destroyed one in eight homes.
Like hundreds of displaced Gazans, Omsyatte’s family have spent more than a year living in a tent on a site near their home. Little rebuilding work has been done during this time – with supplies unable to pass into Gaza because of the ongoing blockade imposed by Israel in 2007 – and groups of children now pick their way through piles of rubble, kicking footballs around the bombsites which used to be local landmarks.
Homelessness is just one of the issues facing the 780,000 Gazan children in the aftermath of the conflict, problems that are explored in a revealing new documentaryDispatches: Children of Gaza, to be screened tomorrow at 8pm on Channel 4. Perhaps the most disturbing of these is the emotional scars borne by children who have survived the conflict; the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme reports that the majority of children show signs of anxiety, depression and behavioural problems.
Small boys build toy rockets out of drinks bottles, and talk about the fake guns they are going to buy with their pocket money. While boys the world over are preoccupied with fighting and weapons, this takes on a more sinister significance when the game isn’t Cowboys vs Indians, but Jews vs Arabs, and the children’s make-believe warfare is chillingly realistic.
These games may reflect the children’s desire for revenge against their neighbours, of which many speak openly. “I think we are seeing a growing desire for violence, and it saddens me,” said Jezza Neumann, the Bafta-winningdirector of the programme. “If they could get revenge legally, or saw someone saying sorry, then perhaps they could come to terms with it, but there has been no recourse. What you’re seeing now may only be the tip of the iceberg.”
Mahmoud, 12, describes the day Israeli soldiers knocked on the door and shot his father dead, lying down in the dirt where his father fell in a heartbreaking reconstruction, and describes the enormous changes it wrought upon him. “Before the war, I was thinking about education, but after I started thinking about becoming a fighter,” he says, his thickly lashed brown eyes staring straight into the camera. “God willing, if I can kill one Israeli it will be better than nothing.”
Desperate to avenge his father’s death, Mahmoud is encouraged by his uncle Ahmed, a member of the terrorist group Islamic Jihad. Sitting Mahmoud down in front of a martyrdomfilm, Ahmed says, “Look how he doesn’t feel a thing when he is detonated” as a suicide bomber dies. Just a few hundred yards from the family’s home is a training camp for Gaza’s fighters – both Hamas and Islamic Jihad – where young men carrying rocket launchers are clearly visible.
While Mahmoud is desperate for revenge, his motherweeps when she considers the possibility that he may become a martyr. “It is an honour to die in the name of Allah, but I don’t want to lose my son,” she said.
Some believe that with Israel’s tight restrictions on movement blocking conventional career options for the 1.1 million people who live there, children may feel they have no choice but to join resistance movements. Last week Palestinians in the Gaza Strip lit 1,000 candles and held a peaceful protest to mark 1,000 days of the Israeli blockade. During this time, unemployment has risen to 45 per cent, with 76 per cent of households now living in poverty.
“The children are struggling with the idea of the future,” Mr Neumann said. “Many graduates in Gaza are unemployed, and they can’t see a way forward because they can’t get out.”
Families have been fractured by the conflict, with many parents racked by guilt because they couldn’t protect their children from the violence, and now cannot provide for them in the aftermath. Sitting in the tent which is now their home, Omsyatte’s father weeps as he talks of his regret over the death of his son Ibrahim.
“The Israelis killed my son while he was in my arms, and I could do nothing to protect him,” he says, tears streaming down his face. “I couldn’t even look at him when he was taking his last breaths of life, because the soldiers were right above my head. I was too much of a coward to even hug my son. I was afraid that they would kill me. These things torment me.”
Dr Ahmed Abu Tawanheena, the director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, says this issue is also affecting children in Gaza. “They have lost their parents twice: first, during the conflict, when they saw their parents terrified and unable to protect them from the violence. Now, under the blockade, they see their parents are still unable to provide for their basic needs, such
as shelter or food,” he said. “It’s a crisis which is threatening families and communities across the Gaza Strip.”
For some, this crisis has had a devastating impact on family relationships, with mental health professionals and NGOs linking a rise in domestic violence with these feelings of guilt and impotence. A study by the Palestinian Women’s Information and Media Centre (PWIC) in March 2009 found that 77 per cent of women in the Gaza Strip are exposed to domestic violence, while a survey by the UN Development Fund for Women (Unifem) also indicated that violence against women increased during periods of heavy conflict.
Many children are suffering the physical effects of the conflict. One of these is Mahmoud’s nine-year-old sister Amal. Trapped under the rubble of her home – which was destroyed by Israeli shells – for four days before she was rescued, Amal was left with shrapnel lodged in her brain. Plagued by headaches and nosebleeds, and unable to get the medical care she needs in Gaza, Amal is lucky enough to be granted papers which allow her to travel to nearby Tel Aviv to be examined by a specialist. However, her experiences have left her so scared of Israelis that she doesn’t want to go.
Crouching over a colouring book, her curly brown hair held back with pretty hair bands, she explained: “I’m scared to go to Israel. From the Jews. I’m frightened they might kill me.”
Many of the children in Gaza’s Shefa hospital do not have the option of leaving the strip, and the prognosis for children in the oncology ward is bleak. Chemotherapy is not available in Gaza, and many of the children on the ward have not been granted the papers they need to seek the treatment readily available to Palestinians just across the Israeli and Egyptian borders. One of these children is 10-year-old Ribhye, crippled by advanced leukaemia and unable to leave Gaza. His distraught father, sitting in a hospital room devoid of the equipment and medicine his son so desperately needs, is devastated not to have been granted leave to take Ribhye out of Gaza. “How do I get out? This border is closed, that border is closed. What do I do?” he asked.
“The mortality rate for cancer in Gaza is much higher than elsewhere,” said Steve Sosebee, president of the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund. “You have to get a permit if you want to cross into Gaza and most of them are not granted. A lot of kids are dying as a result of the decisions being made by the people in charge, whether Hamas, the Egyptian government, the Israeli government.”
Even the parents who have papers allowing their children to leave don’t fare much better. Eight-year-old leukaemia sufferer Wissam was granted permission to cross into Egypt for treatment, but has been waiting for weeks for the border crossing to be opened. After being told that he would finally be allowed through after sitting at the border for hours, the coach full of hospital patients was turned away, and had to make the long drive back to the Nasser hospital. Wissam’s father desperately tried to find out from hospital officials why the coach was turned back. “Every day the child stays here is a danger to his life,” he said, his words echoing the thoughts of so many Palestinian parents.
A TROPICAL depression or cyclone is what it would take to end water supply shortages in the country.
Director of the Fiji Meteorological Office, Rajendra Prasad, said a tropical depression or cyclone would get us out of the situation.
While February is regarded as part of the wet season, he says it has only rained in some parts of the country.
“There are places where the grass has turned green while there are others where the grass is still brown,” he said.
“We are still receiving below average rainfall and it was not as widespread as we had expected.”
Mr Prasad has urged companies that rely on rainwater to prepare themselves. He said reservoirs and dams could have a trouble with supply this season. The dry season begins in May.
Last month, the weather office classified certain areas to be under a “meteorological drought”.
These areas were Navua, Koronivia, Nausori, Labasa, Savusavu, Taveuni and Lakeba. Those in the “warning” stage are Yasawa-i-rara, Viwa, Vatukoula, Ba, Tavua, Sigatoka, Dobuilevu, Dreketi, Seaqaqa, Suva, Nabouwalu, Kadavu and Udu Point.
A meteorological drought is declared if rainfall is well below expected levels for an extended period. Source
Update March 17 2010:
Well they got a Cyclone. I really do not see how this will help anyone however. Other then maybe some reporters will make it into the disaster area to survey and talk to the people. Seems Reporters have a hard time in Fiji however.
Of course Guess who makes huge profits at the expense of all concerned.
They take the resources and the hell with the people who should have access to them.
Fiji Water: So cool, so fresh, so bad for the environment?
By SARAH GILBERT
August 24 2009
The story of Fiji Water, as detailed in a startling investigative piece in Mother Jones magazine this month, seems familiar. Leafing through the story, I found myself trying to remember where I’d read this tale before; like an old melody at the back of my brain, it hovered, just beyond memory.
Suddenly it came to me: it’s Dole, it’s United Fruit, it’s West Indies Sugar Corporation, it’s the old, old story. A company located in a lush, tropical location with a totalitarian government that welcomes foreign interests with deep pockets. It doesn’t tax them, gives them access to the country’s most precious natural resources, and stands by with heavy artillery in hand, protecting them while they strip the country.
Meanwhile, the country’s citizens struggle with terrible poverty, hunger and squalid conditions. The only part of the story that Fiji Water has not yet repeated is the inevitable depletion of the resource — in this case, a 17-mile-long aquifer to which Fiji Water has “near-exclusive access” — and the subsequent abandonment of the country.
What makes this story so difficult to swallow is how eagerly the U.S. seems to have embraced Fiji’s co-owners Stewart and Lynda Resnick. On this side of the Pacific, the pair cheerfully line the pockets of any political figure in sight (they supported both McCain and Obama in the past election) while selling Fiji’s best, cleanest water at a huge profit. On the other side of the ocean, the people of Fiji suffer under terrible water conditions that have led to outbreaks of typhoid and parasitic infections.
It appears that America adores the Resnicks: Lynda brags that she knows “everyone in the world, every mogul, every movie star.” These relationships have proven handy, as the Resnicks have reaped $1.5 million a year in water subsidies for their almond, pistachio and pomegranate crops in the U.S.
%Poll-33708% The Resnicks and their Paramount Farms and Paramount Citrus could use the water to irrigate their fields (which are already subsidized by the government), or they could sell it to municipalities. According to critics, the Resnicks are “trying to ‘game’ the water market the way Enron gamed the energy market.”
So the Resnicks are not known for their even-handedness with politicians or water, and their practices in the U.S. are not the greenest of all possible greens. In fact, they could share responsibility for many of our environmental woes. They could have a hand in California’s future water shortages, during which they could profit gloriously. All the while, they are loudly and proudly marketing Fiji Water as the most environmentally friendly bottled water company in the world.
This, of course, is not saying much. Bottled water is notorious for its position in top five lists of “what not to do” for the planet. One day, future civilizations will look back on this decade and wonder in disbelief why it was that we pumped water out of one part of the planet, encased it in plastic, then encased it again for shipping, and spent many many non-renewable resources to bring it to another part of the planet where clean water was already plentiful. It’s patently ridiculous.
The story is disturbing because of the truths it tells us about ourselves and our society. It’s not just the water thing. It’s the marketing. Lynda Resnick has been repeatedly described as a marketing genius for her ability to transform Fiji Water into a must-have accessory for environmentally-conscious celebrities and politicians, despite its heavy use of plastic and questionable commitment to environmentally sustainable practices. And oh, we are drinking the marketing at far greater rates than we are drinking the water. Our celebrities both enormous (Obama, Paris, and their ilk) and minor (the geekarati at the SXSW festival) can’t live without it. So neither can we. Whatever celebrities sell us? YUM. Damn the consequences.
It’s troubling, at the end of the story, that the company is not, as Anna Lenzer writes in her follow-up to the story (after Fiji Water spokesman Rob Six defended his company) doing anything about the military junta now controlling Fiji. “A UN official . . . in a recent commentary . . . singled out Fiji Water as the one company with enough leverage to force the junta to budge.”
The commentary, by the way, was titled “Why Obama should stop drinking Fiji water.”
Update: A spokesman for Roll International Corporation, the parent company of Fiji Water, contacted DailyFinance, claiming that there are factual errors in the piece. Roll International maintains that Fiji Water is not profitable, and that the company does not receive subsidies from the state of California.
One has to wonder how many other Corporations are stealing Fiji Resources?
Considering the Poverty one would think any company or corporation would be a bit more responsible. Seems of course this is not the case however.
What is Poverty in Fiji
Poverty is a difficult concept to understand and maintain an objective perspective.
Poverty in Fiji identifies those households, which cannot afford the basic minimum nutritionally adequate and palatable diet. It also define as that situation in which people are unable to obtain sufficient amounts of food, water, shelter, clothing, education and health care to meet their basic needs.
This poverty line is simply a certain level of income or expenditure below which an individual or family will be deprived of the basic necessities of life for a specified time and period. It is calculated in terms of expenditure for a nutritionally adequate diet plus expenditure for non-food items such rent, clothing, fuel etc.
Overview of Poverty in Fiji
In a recent study in Fiji it was found that one quarter of the household’s were classified as poor, but many more were in constant danger of sliding into poverty or destitution because their household income was so small. The study also found that the poor were not a homogenous group –poor people were not necessarily subsistence farmers, the unemployed or the lazy. Most poor households had someone in employment. The basic needs poverty line in Fiji was $83 (gross income) per week at national level. Source
Of course with poverty comes Prostitution.
Poverty linked to prostitution
Monday, February 15, 2010
Prostitution can not be wiped out in Fiji as long as poverty exists, says the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre (FWCC) co-ordinator Shamima Ali.
Ms Ali says tougher laws on prostitution will impact but it will still exist.
“There are higher chances that prostitution will be pushed into being an underground activity,” she said.
“It is a very old profession and goes back so many years, and the poverty and lack of education for women is not helping either.”
Ms Ali said prostitution was fuelled by men’s desire for sex.
She said the Crime Decree was a good approach to fight sex crimes and the sex trade.
But, she said, the root of the problem was poverty and this had to be eradicated first.
Ms Ali said the level of poverty in some areas of the country was extreme and the FWCC was aware of cases where wives turned to prostitution to earn money for the family.
She said the sex trade provided easy and more money than legal employment.
Meanwhile, police, on the other hand, will crackdown on all those involved in the sex trade industry.
Police suspect that massage parlours and some hotels are involved in the trade.
An investigation by the police has come up with startling revelations that people are getting much more than just a massage at parlours, said the police spokesman, Sergeant Suliano Tevita.
“Our investigations have shown us that people are given rooms in massage parlours and we suspect that this is for the purpose of prostitution.”
Sgt Tevita said the implementation of the new anti-prostitution law in the Crimes Decree had given the police power to prosecute people associated with the sex trade industry.
“Similarly, hotel and motel owners and management can also face charges if police find them facilitating prostitution in their establishments,” he warned.
The Crimes Decree states that people who make a living off prostitution are liable for a jail term of six months, while people caught hiring prostitutes can get jail terms of up to 12 years.
Anyone found operating a brothel or services which procure prostitution are liable for prosecution. The penalties are harsher when the crime involves people under the age of 18.
Under the new decree, this crime is punishable by a prison sentence of 12 months. The decree also states that any person residing with a prostitute is also liable.
Punishment in regards to prostitution ranges from 12 years to three months in jail and also includes fines. Source
Here’s the video for the Helping Haiti single ‘Everybody Hurts’, featuring 21 artists including Leona Lewis, Rod Stewart, Mariah Carey, Take That, Kylie, Robbie Williams, Cheryl Cole, Susan Boyle, Michael Buble, Mika, James Morrisson, Alexandra Burke, Miley Cyrus, James Blunt, Jon Bon Jovi, Westlife and JLS.
Haiti still needs an enormous amount of help. They will for sometime to come.
Rains threaten more Haiti misery
Aid groups say the coming rainy season could bring more misery to quake-hit Haiti
Brazil’s president visited Haiti, pledging more financial assistance
February 26 2010
The first heavy rains have hit Haiti since last month’s devastating earthquake struck, swamping makeshift camps that house hundreds of thousands of homeless and raising fears of landslides and disease.
The rains late on Thursday came as forecasters warned of a large storm heading in Haiti’s direction that could strike over the weekend.
More than a million people were made homeless by the deadly January 12 quake, many of them now living in flimsy makeshift shelters that offer little protection from heavy rains.
Relief workers say the approaching wet season and the hurricane season later this year will likely add to misery for quake survivors struggling to rebuild their lives.
Even before the quake Haiti often suffered badly during the rain and hurricane seasons as a result of its poor infrastructure.
In 2008 a series of storms killed more than 800 people.
Now in the capital Port-au-Prince, some 770, 000 quake survivors are living in makeshift camps and with the onset of rains, the threat of disease and infection poses another great challenge.
‘Huge challenge’
“We have a huge challenge in terms of just providing emergency shelter – something that we feel that if we put all of our weight behind, as we are doing right now, we will be able (to do),” Kristen Knutson, a spokeswoman for the UN office that is coordinating the international relief effort, told Reuters news agency.
Thursday’s deluge hit as relief officials changed strategy on dealing with quake survivors, delaying plans to build big refugee camps outside the capital.
Instead, they want the homeless to pack up their tents and return to destroyed neighbourhoods.
Gerald-Emile Brun, an architect with the Haitian government’s reconstruction committee, told Reuters that “everything has to be done before the start of the rainy season, and we will not be able to do it”.
Brun also suggested that Haitians may largely be left to fend for themselves.
Haiti meanwhile is continuing to count the economic cost of the quake.
Call to cancel debt
On Thursday the country’s president, Rene Preval, said government assessments had indicated that the disaster would cost the already poor country up to 50 per cent of its gross domestic product.
“This earthquake… led to the deaths of 200,000 to 300,000 people and destroyed from 35 to 50 per cent of the GDP,” he said.
Preval was speaking reporters after meeting Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, his Brazilian counterpart at a UN-Brazilian military base in Port-au-Prince.
During his brief visit, Lula called on the international community to cancel Haiti’s debt, and officials from the two governments signed agreements to aid Haitian farmers and schools, which were hard hit in the quake.
According to the United Nations, 5,000 schools were damaged or destroyed in Haiti, which was already the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere before the catastrophe struck.
Lula also referred to a recent South American summit’s pledge of $300m in aid for Haiti, including an agreement to create a $100m fund to help the government with immediate needs. Source
January 26 2010
Gaza’s only power station will close by the end of this week following a European Union decision to stop buying fuel for the plant. According to the power station’s director, Rafeeq Maliha, “Since last November the EU has stopped funding the purchase of diesel for us.” This means, he added, that without some external intervention between now and this weekend, the densely populated Gaza Strip will have no central power source to operate many basic services.
Engineer Imad Canaan, the vice president of the Palestinian Power Authority explained that the power authority is unable to continue providing adequate energy resources to the citizens of Gaza. “The Israeli blockade and the suspension of EU support have reduced the output of the station by 50%,” he said.
The Gaza Power Station has been bombarded repeatedly and deliberately by Israel, most notably during the assault and invasion a year ago when the Israelis targeted the civilian infrastructure. The Israeli blockade of Gaza has prevented vital repair materials being imported; these are essential if the power station is to return to full operational capacity. Source
Sewage Collapse threatens the health of Palestinians in Gaza
January 27 2010
Palestinians in Gaza have a lot to contend with, especially since the war launched by the Israeli Occupiers just over a year ago. With the loss of more than 1,400 Palestinian lives, most of whom were women and children, the near total destruction of whatever little infrastructure that remained and the general pillaging of the territory, Palestinians are once again faced with the prospect of rebuilding their lives in the besieged Gaza Strip.
However, because of the ongoing Israeli blockade on essential materials, the Palestinians have not been able to carry out any reconstruction of their houses, hospitals, schools and the local infrastructure, including the power station and sewage treatment plants. Sewage disposal has become a huge problem all over Gaza, with leaks onto farmland and into nearby water sources leading to pollution and less fertile soil, which in turn has led to poor harvests. Sewage and waste material from cities and refugee camps with limited access to sewage treatment plants is ending up in water sources which lead to the beaches of Gaza and the sea. This has resulted in severe water pollution and the contamination of fish, as well as a variety of acute and chronic water-borne diseases.
Israelis impose “financial punishments” on Palestinians
January 26 2010
Israeli prison staff impose financial punishments on Palestinian prisoners.
A human rights organisation has claimed that Israeli prison staff are imposing financial punishments on Palestinian prisoners. In a statement, the Prisoners’ Centre for Studies said that guards and administrators in Israeli prisons force Palestinian detainees to pay for the water and electricity that they consume as a form of additional punishment.
According to the centre, prisoners are also “fined” for trivial reasons, such as reading the Qur’an or praying during the prison’s daily roll call (if officers enter when it is the time for prayer); if the imam, while giving the Friday sermon, utters a word that the guards don’t like; when a prisoner doesn’t manage to get out of the bathroom in the time specified by the guards; and for other similar reasons when the guards abuse their positions and use any excuse to penalise prisoners.
The centre’s director, Raafat Hamdouna, claims that prison administrators withdraw the “fines” from prisoners’ personal bank accounts without informing prisoners. If anyone doesn’t have a bank account, the administration imposes a future fine against his name, provoking the prisoner even further.
Mr. Hamdouna called upon human rights and humanitarian organizations to intervene to stop this unreasonable behaviour. “The Israelis treat prisoners like tenants and force them to pay for water, electricity, food and accommodation,” he added. Source
Fifty-four members of Congress urging the president to pressure Israel to treat Gazans like human beings is a positive development, albeit a VERY small one. Critics may content that the letter protects Israel’s image. I understand that. But I still think it’s encouraging.
Names of the 54 are at the above link. Just so we know who actually cares about the people of Gaza.
Gaza is in desperate need of materials to repair rebuild. Soon they will have no hydro. So just imagine if you had no hydro. This will affect evrything from hospitals to bussiniesses and storage of food and the list goes on an on.
Aid money was promised to help rebuild Gaza and little to none has been received by them. The blockade keeps everything out. This is also in the face of arecent flood in Gaza which has done even more damage. This of course was never in the main stream media. How typical.
Of course much of what we should be told is never in the main stream media.
Shame on them. Shame on the world leaders who do nothing but talk about it.
That is all they do is talk. Of course that makes it into the media and fools the public at large that they are actually doing something, when in fact they are really doing nothing. What has changed for those in Gaza or the West bank in the last year. NOTHING. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING HAS CHANGED.
Their lives go from bad to worse is all. Every day their lives are more difficult. Thanks to the world leaders who pretend to do something. That is all they do is pretend. They are doing little to help ease the pain and suffering of the Palestinians.
Seems the EU and Western Countries have done little to nothing to help those in Gaza.
Due to the lack of real help people are suffering beyond imagination. Ignored by the Main stream media and World Leaders. Tiger Woods got more air time then people who are suffering and dieing. Well that says it all doesn’t it.
How coincidental the Gaza flood took place during the Haiti Crisis.
Guaranteed it would be ignored by all the main stream media.
Gaza is in crisis and no one seems to notice. The 54 who signed the letter to Obama at least care enough to try. Will Obama listen I hardly thing so he is helping Egypt built the wall of shame and it is a shame. He has done nothing to ease the desperation of those in Gaza and if any time he says he is doing something I know as many other do it is pure BS. His actions and those of the US Government speaks volumes. They want to destroy the people of Gaza.
The blockade is killing Gaza, say NGOs and UN agencies
January 22 2010
One year after Israel’s military offensive on Gaza, United Nations agencies and the Association for International Development Agencies (AIDA), representing over 80 NGOs, are highlighting the impact of the blockade on Gaza on the health of its population and on health services – and are calling for an immediate opening of Gaza’s crossings.
Max Gaylard, the Resident Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said on Wednesday 20 January 2010 that “the continuing closure of the Gaza Strip is undermining the functioning of the health care system and putting at risk the health of 1.4 million people in Gaza.”
He continued: “It is causing on-going deterioration in the social, economic and environmental determinants of health. It is hampering the provision of medical supplies and the training of health staff and it is preventing patients with serious medical conditions getting timely specialised treatment outside Gaza”
The economy of Gaza is in virtual collapse with rising unemployment and poverty which will have long term adverse effects on the physical and mental health of the population. The environment is also in decline, including water quality, sewage and waste disposal and other environmental hazards (including munitions and medical waste) which may lead to long term effects on health.
More than 750,000 children live in Gaza. The humanitarian community is gravely concerned about the future of this generation whose health needs are not being met. The decline in infant mortality, which has fallen steadily over recent decades, has stalled in the last few years.
The lack of building materials as a result of the blockade is affecting essential health facilities: the new surgical wing in Gaza’s main Shifa hospital has remained unfinished since 2006. Hospitals and primary care facilities, damaged during operation ‘Cast Lead’, have not been rebuilt because construction materials are not allowed into Gaza.
Operation ‘Cast Lead’ damaged 15 of Gaza’s 27 hospitals and 43 of its 110 primary health care facilities were either damaged or destroyed.
Supplies of drugs and disposables have generally been allowed into Gaza – though there are often shortages on the ground. However, certain types of medical equipment, such as x-ray equipment and electronic devices are very difficult to bring in. Clinical staff frequently lack the medical equipment they need. Medical devices are often broken, missing spare parts, or out of date.
Health professionals in Gaza have been cut off from the outside world. Since 2000, very few doctors, nurses or technicians have been able to leave the Strip for training necessary to update their clinical skills or to learn about new medical technology. This is severely undermining their ability to provide quality health care.
Many specialised treatments, for example, complex heart surgery and treatment for certain types of cancer, are not available and patients are therefore referred for treatment to hospitals outside Gaza. But many patients have had their applications for exit permits denied or delayed by the Israeli Authorities and have missed their appointments. Some have died while waiting for referral.
Tony Laurance, the Head of Office for the World Health Organisation (WHO) in the West Bank and Gaza, declared: “An effective health care system cannot be sustained in isolation from the international community. Open borders are needed to ensure the health of the 1.4 million people in Gaza”
The humanitarian community believes the health sector would face serious problems in dealing with another emergency on the scale of last year’s Operation Cast Lead, said AIDA yesterday. “The Government of Israel has a legal duty to guarantee the right to health for people in Gaza. The humanitarian community calls for the crossings into Gaza to be reopened.”
More than 61 years since the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) and 42 years after Israel’s belligerent occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the issue of forced displacement of Palestinians from their homeland remains an ongoing phenomenon that fails to receive the attention it deserves.
At the end of 2008, at least 7.1 million Palestinians, representing 67 percent of the entire Palestinian population (10.6 million) worldwide were displaced persons. Among them are 6.6 million refugees and 427,000 IDPs. This makes Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) the largest and longest-standing case of displaced persons in the world today.
Unhu Wismond Exantus survived on biscuits and coca cola
January 25 2010
By Gareth Dorrian
A HAITIAN earthquake survivor cheated death for 11 days on a diet of biscuits and beer.
Unhu Wismond Exantus, 24, was buried in tons of rubble as he hid under a hotel desk.
Rescuers got the shop worker out of the remains of the Napoli Inn Hotel in Port-au-Prince, hours after the country’s Government had called a halt to rescue plans.
He said: “I ate anything I found. I survived by drinking beer and Coca-Cola and eating cookies.
“Every night I thought about the revelation that I would survive. It was God who was tucking me away in his arms. It gave me strength.”
Officials confirmed the death toll has passed 150,000, which only includes bodies dealt with by the government in and around Port-au-Prince.
Tens of thousands more victims have been buried in outlying areas, are trapped in rubble or their relatives have not registered the death.
Communications minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue said: “Nobody knows how many bodies are buried in the rubble. 200,000? 300,000? Who knows the overall death toll?”
The United Nations came under fire after it was revealed officers are living in relative luxury at the capital’s airport. Food, blankets and medicine have flooded in from around the world, but aid agencies admit it is not getting out fast enough.
Volunteers say efforts to help have been delayed by bureaucracy and red tape.
UN spokesman Alejandro Chicheri said: “Of course we would like to be doing more but the logistics are a nightmare.”
Save The Children has called for a ban on adopting Haitian children as gangs are kidnapping kids caught in the chaos and selling them for £5,000 a time.
X Factor champ Joe McElderry, 18, and Westlife star Mark Feehily, 29, have joined the line-up for Simon Cowell’s Haiti charity single.
The pair join Alexandra Burke, 21, and James Blunt, 36, recording a cover of REM’s Everybody Hurts in London today. Source
People world wide have united for Haiti. We must also keep watch to make sure, those who need help the most actually get it. We must be sure they are helped as they should be.
If we are to intervene in their lives may it be for the betterment of all the people of Haiti. Not just the rich. We must monitor our Governments and the UN.
Even through this devastation Haitians are being taken advantage of. How sad anyone would want to profit from their despair.
Profiteers are lining up at the door but that is yet another story for another day.
The History of Haitian life is what we must bring to light so it never happens again.
It is up to all of use to assure they have a better future to look forward to. Their past if horrid to say the least. The earthquake is absolute devastation. Aid workers are concerned on all fronts. Aid is still not reaching people. Children are being kidnapped.
In one of my updates US soldiers were told to stop giving Haitians food. Why? Do they want to starve the Haitians or make them angry. That is an act of deliberate cruelty. Beyond cruel in my opinion. the US is now sending 20,000 troops to Haiti for what to see to it they starve.
Letting in Aid workers and supplies has not been a priority. Why?
Seems there is much amiss in all of this.
Finally we have numerous reporters in Haiti, lets hope they will tell us the truth.
From June 20, 2009
A funeral and a boycott: ‘The struggle continues’ in Haiti
HIP – Fanmi Lavalas, Haiti’s largest political party and grassroots movement, laid Catholic liberation theology priest Father Gerard Jean-Juste to rest this past Thursday. A large banner waved overhead declaring “[Father] Jery you left us but the struggle continues” as thousands of mourners streamed out carrying Jean-Juste’s casket, sparking an impromptu pro-Lavalas demonstration. Chants of “The struggle continues, return Aristide” and “No elections without Lavalas” rang through the streets as a reminder that Lavalas is preparing to wage a second round of boycotts against the upcoming Senate elections scheduled for Sunday.
The procession and demonstration were suddenly interrupted by gunfire that could be heard from around the corner. Witnesses report that Brazilian soldiers with the U.N. military mission opened fire after attempting to arrest one of the mourners. The U.N. has since denied the shooting and claims that the victim had been killed by either a rock thrown by the crowd or a blunt instrument. Eyewitnesses on the scene have countered that the U.N. is trying to cover up the affair as it promises to heighten tensions before Sunday’s elections.
The U.N. and the Obama administration continue to endorse and finance a second round of controversial Senate elections in Haiti. The first round was held last April 19 and was marked by a low voter turnout following a successful boycott campaign waged by Fanmi Lavalas.
The Fanmi Lavalas party was excluded from participation in the first round after President Rene Preval’s handpicked Conseil Electoral Provisoire (CEP) demanded original signatures on all of their documents. With former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, their party’s national leader, in exile, Lavalas was unable to comply with what some in their ranks have referred to as “a humiliating last minute request.”
The powerful community organizations that form the base of the Lavalas movement then announced “Operation Closed Door,” urging voters to stay away from the polls. Independent observers put participation at between 3-4 percent, while the CEP announced it had been as high as 11 percent. Lavalas recently announced a boycott of the second round, called “Operation Closed Door 2,” and leaflets were distributed throughout the capital on Thursday urging voters to “stay away from the polls, end the exclusion [of Haiti’s largest political party].”
Members of the Lavalas Mobilization Commission, organizers of the boycott, are reportedly in hiding after CEP President Gerard Frantz Verret demanded last Thursday that the Ministry of Justice take “public action in motion against all those who undertake to invite the people to abstain from voting and against those who intend to endanger lives and property.” Public action in motion or “action publique” is a remnant of the Napoleonic Code in Haitian law and, like the term “associating with criminals,” is widely seen as a blanket charge to justify prolonged detention of political opposition in Haiti.
A second successful boycott of Sunday’s elections by Lavalas would serve to further damage the credibility of the Preval administration. The international community is reported to have invested over $12.9 million in an electoral process that many in Haiti say has provided little towards solving the country’s political insolvency and mounting desperation.
Haiti Information Project (HIP), winner of the Project Censored 2008 Real News Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism, is a non-profit alternative news service providing coverage and analysis of breaking developments in Haiti. Email HIP at HIP@teledyol.net. To learn more, visit www.haitiaction.net.
Kevin Pina The Bush administration’s forced removal of democratically electedHaitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, while a power-sharingdeal with his political opposition was being brokered in 2004,resulted in the country’s expulsion from the Caribbean Communityand was condemned by the African Union. The installation ofthe US-backed replacement government of Gerard Latortue hasresulted in the rape, torture and false imprisonment of thousandsof ordinary Haitians. The only Latin American country to condemnthe US’s action in Haiti, however, has been Venezuela. Othercountries and organisations like the Organization of AmericanStates (OAS) have been bought over with a massive programmeof civilian and military funding by the US. Source
I would have to say the rest of the world was kept in the dark about what happens in Haiti.
It was never in the main stream media. More times the not every attempt was made to keep it out of the eyes of the world at large.
Now it the time to expose what has been happening in Haiti.
Of course you still will not hear these stories in the main stream media. What you are hearing now is all the heros going to rescue them.
The earthquake is good PR for the US , Israel, Canada, France etc. and the UN, but the truth be told those in Haiti have been oppressed by all.
Now is the time to share the truth.
From December 25 2005
Heavily armed soldiers of the Brazilian military, which leads the UN
military mission to Haiti known as MINUSTAH, had earlier taken over a
building in Pele belonging to an accused drug dealer with alleged ties
to presidential candidate Guy Philippe. The troops were seen
reinforcing the facility with sand bags and equipment as a military
unit on the ground led a group of black-hooded residents through the
neighborhood on a mission to identify and target suspected “bandits”
for arrest. Twelve residents, ten men and two women, were reportedly
arrested based on the accusations of the hooded informants and were
taken away to an undisclosed UN facility. Several residents reacted
with shock and anger at the site of the black-hooded informants, a new
tactic apparently being used by the UN forces to pacify poor
neighborhoods in the capital. “This is really scary because we don’t
know who these hooded accusers are. We don’t even know if they are
really from our area. I just saw them arrest a man I have known for
years and who is not involved with anything violent. Where are they
taking him?” asked one angry woman who refused to give her name.
Black hoods well doesn’t that just remind one of Iraq or Afghanistan?
Those same black hooded people were there too. Amazing.
From February 20 2008
US Marines, Canadian Special Forces and troops of the French Foreign Legion were authorized by the UN Security Council to ‘stabilize’ Haiti following the ouster of president Jean-Bertrand Aristide on February 29, 2004. In June 2004, the United Nations sent the militaries of Brazil, Argentina and Chile to take control of Haiti with the objective of creating conditions for new elections. The Brazilian armed forces were given overall control of the military component of the UN operation.
On February 19, 2008, Brazilian military forces stormed the neighborhood of Village de Dieu on the outskirts of the capital of Port-au-Prince. Their troops entered with weapons drawn and began a massive sweep with UN police in tow that ended with the arrest of dozens of young men in the area. Residents claim this military incursion was executed without a single warrant being presented from Haiti’s courts or just cause. Residents of poor communities throughout Haiti say that terrifying raids led by Brazilian forces have been common occurrences since they arrived in 2004. For the families of those arrested and left traumatized by these incursions, it raises serious questions about the role Brazilian forces have played in Haiti.
DOHA: Qatar Charity has sent aid to flood victims in Mighrafa area in the centre of Gaza Strip. The Charity’s humanitarian gesture is aimed at alleviating the miseries of the families affected by flooding that forced them to evacuate their homes and farms.
Abdullah bin Hussien Al N’amah, Chairman of the Charity, said that Qatar has sent instant relief material to families and has begun distributing it to 40 families.
The relief goods consist of foodstuff and cash doles.
The Charity is also coordinating with local authorities to asses the damage to further provide aid and also to contribute in the reconstruction of damaged houses.
At least 12 people were injured in the flooding which destroyed scores of homes and inundated animal shelters.
The flooding cut off roads and washed away a bridge linking Gaza city to the south of the territory. Flood waters reached 3 meters (9ft) in some places. Source
SAIA demands that Carleton University immediately divest its stock in BAE Systems, L-3 Communications, Motorola, Northrop Grumman, and Tesco, and adopt a Socially Responsible Investment policy.
GAZA – The United Nations said on Wednesday Israel’s blockade of Gaza undermines the enclave’s healthcare system and puts patients at risk.
Max Gaylard, resident Humanitarian Coordinator for the Palestinian territories, said Israel was to be commended for letting Palestinians from Gaza access specialist medical care but could save more lives by allowing more timely treatment.
“It is causing ongoing deterioration in the social, economic and environmental determinants of health,” he said. “It is hampering the provision of medical supplies and the training of health staff and it is preventing patients with serious medical conditions getting timely specialised treatment.”
“We have had extreme cases of patients dying because they could not get out to get the more advanced medical care in Israel,” Gaylard told Reuters in an interview after presenting a report on the situation at a Gaza news conference.
“It is quite true that hundreds of patients do get out to Israel. That has been happening on a continuing basis. That is good and we welcome it and the Israelis are to be commended for that,” he said. “I think we are concerned about the ones who do not go out and there are too many of them.”
One year later
One year after Israel’s offensive on Hamas-ruled Gaza, UN agencies and the Association for International Development Agencies (AIDA), representing over 80 NGOs, issued a report highlighting the health impact of the blockade.
They again called on Israel to relax its tight control of the Gaza Strip’s borders to allow sufficient supply of essential items and let people seek care not available in the enclave.
Gaza student Fida Hejji, 18, died of cancer waiting for Israeli permission to go to an Israeli hospital for treatment.
She was promised an entry permit three times. Three days after she died last November, her family got a hospital date.
Hejji had hoped to get life-saving treatment in Israel as other Gazans have done. The Egyptian border is also closed.
“In her [Hejji’s] last days she used to ask when she could rest, and when all her pain would come to an end,” said her mother Shadia. “I knew she was dying.”
Israel generally permits supplies of drugs into Gaza but not always enough to prevent shortages. Certain medical equipment such as X-ray and electronic devices are difficult to bring in and clinical staff frequently lack equipment they need.
Israel says it approves most requests by Gazan patients to cross its border for treatment, and there has been a 25 per cent increase in approvals since 2008 – data supported by World Health Organisation findings issued by Gaylard’s office.
“Not only are we doing our utmost to allow the people of Gaza every possible medical treatment, but we are doing this in a situation in which their own government is imposing a state of war and trying deliberately to harm Israelis, including those whose mission is to assist the very people of Gaza,” said Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for Israel’s foreign ministry.
Too late for some
The UN report said 1,103 patients sought permits for treatment in Israel in December 2009. Most succeeded but 21 per cent were denied or delayed, as a result of which patients missed their hospital appointments and had to restart.
“Two patients died recently while awaiting referral – one in November and one in December,” it said. In total, “27 patients have died while awaiting referral” in 2009.
Israel captured Gaza from Egypt in a 1967 war. The ensuing occupation saw limited Palestinian scope for developing an autonomous health service. Israel left in 2005 but the result was far from the peaceful coexistence it might have hoped for.
Critics accuse Israel of applying collective punishment to Gaza’s 1.5 million people, who are ruled by an elected Islamist government of the Hamas movement. Hamas refuses to recognise Israel and preaches armed struggle until its destruction.
Hamas remains in control despite the hammering Gaza took in the offensive Israel launched a year ago to stop the firing of rockets and mortars aimed at southern Israeli towns.
The UN said Gaza’s economy and environment were in a poor state, with inevitable consequences for health, and it noted that half the population are children.
“The humanitarian community is gravely concerned about the future of this generation whose health needs are not being met.
“The decline in infant mortality, which has occurred steadily over recent decades, has stalled in the last few years.”
Israel refuses to let Gaza have materials that can be put to military use. It says the Palestinians are too ready to blame all ills on Israel, and should not be ungrateful for the medical aid Israeli doctors and hospitals provide.
Israel’s offensive damaged 15 of Gaza’s 27 hospitals and 43 of its 110 primary healthcare facilities, the report said.
Some 1,400 Palestinians died in the bombing and shelling, and Israel lost 13 citizens in the December 27 – January 18 offensive of 2008-2009. Rocket and mortar fire into Israel from Gaza dropped off dramatically in 2009, but has never entirely ceased.
The damage cannot be fixed until Israel allows construction materials into Gaza, the report said. Meanwhile, doctors and nurses are cut off from learning the latest techniques abroad.
“The new surgical wing in Gaza’s main Shifa Hospital has remained unfinished since 2006,” the report noted.
Nafeth Enaeem, head of Shifa’s kidney department, said dialysis treatments had to be carefully rationed last year, which he said was the worst in terms of health conditions.
“Sometimes a cable for a machine took three months of coordination with the Israeli side to get into Gaza,” he said.
Israel has stopped issuing work permits to foreign aid workers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem
James Hider in Jerusalem
January 21 2010
Israel has stopped issuing work permits to foreign aid workers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, sparking fears about the future of relief operations in the Palestinian territories.
The Israeli Interior Ministry has issued only tourist visas to aid groups such as Oxfam, Médecins sans Frontières and Save the Children since before Christmas. They say that their legal situation is now precarious and that some staff have been denied entry by Israeli border officials who also control all entry to the West Bank.
The move came amid pressure from right-wing Israeli groups to crack down on non-governmental organisations, which are often seen as having a political, anti-Israeli bias. Early last year an Israeli group, NGO monitor, forced the New York-based Human Rights Watch to suspend a weapons specialist who had written a scathing report on Israel’s use of white phosphorus during its Gaza offensive. The group tracked down anonymous comments that the researcher had made on online discussions for collectors of Nazi memorabilia.
Some left-wing Israeli groups have accused Israel of “declaring war” on foreign groups such as Human Rights Watch and Oxfam, which have been critical of Israel’s blockade of Gaza.
Aid groups are now worried that the decision by the Interior Ministry could inhibit their work to provide medical support, welfare and basic supplies to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
“We are now in a very precarious legal position,” said Jean-Luc Lambert, head of Médecins sans Frontières in Jerusalem: “We can’t get B1 [working] visas, only [tourist] visas, and with this it is not permitted for us to work.”
Mr Lambert said that aid groups had been given verbal reassurances from the Israeli authorities that they would be able to continue their operations in the 60 per cent of the West Bank under Israeli control, in Arab East Jerusalem and in Gaza — whose only open crossings are on its frontier with Israel, controlled by Israeli forces.
During the Israeli offensive against Gaza, however, the authorities prevented many aid groups from entering the area, raising concerns about the value of any verbal agreement. “This leaves NGOs vulnerable to border guards’ interpretation of the rules,” said Mr Lambert, making the development a serious source of concern for 150 international organisations.
He said that technically, under the new rules, he could not work in his East Jerusalem headquarters, nor hold a meeting in the predominantly Arab half of the city that Israel captured in the 1967 Six-Day War and which both sides claim as their capital.
“Officially, East Jerusalem belongs to the West Bank, but for Israelis it belongs to Israel.”
Another Western aid worker said there was a fear in the aid community that the move was a first step towards expelling them from East Jerusalem, where Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, has said that Jewish settlement building will continue despite protests from the United States and the European Union. “There’s a feeling that we are going to be pushed out of East Jerusalem,” he said.
The Interior Ministry denied that visas had been stopped and said that if aid organisation workers spent most of their time in the West Bank they would need to apply to the Palestinian Authority or the Israeli Army for permits.
Aid workers said that they usually worked in both Israel and the West Bank, with their logistical hubs in the former, with its access to international sea, land and air routes, while bringing relief to Palestinians in the isolated West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The Interior Ministry said that it was holding discussions with the army about how to deal with such cases.
NGOs operating in Gaza also worry that a lack of work permits could mean that they would not be able to enter the sealed-off coastal enclave through Israel, and may have to take in supplies through Egypt.
Catherine Weibel, of Oxfam, said that the issue of Israeli work permits was generating much anguish among foreign aid workers, many of whom worry that they could be denied permission to re-enter.
NGO Monitor goes after all Human Rights organizations. NGO Monitor is is a group set up to harrass Human Rights organisations.
Not a very impressive group. They go after groups like Amnesty International or the Red cross even. So anything they have to say should be totally ignored by everyone.
It rates right up there with Honest Reporting or Camera.
They rather remind me of Fox TV. Anything but honest or fair.
Just more or less lobby groups. All Pro Israel and send thousands of letters to whoever they wish to annoy.
Anything to stop the truth about Israel from being told.
The US has never wanted Haitian self-rule, and its focus on ‘security concerns’ has hampered the earthquake aid response
By Mark Weisbrot
January 20 2010
On Monday, six days after the earthquake in Haiti, the US Southern Command finally began to drop bottled water and food from an air force C-17. US defence secretary Robert Gates had previously rejected such a method because of “security concerns”.
If people do not get clean water, there could be epidemics of water-borne diseases that could greatly increase the death toll. But the US is now sending 10,000 troops and seems to be prioritising “security” over much more urgent, life-and-death needs. This in addition to the increase of 3,500 UN troops scheduled to arrive.
On Sunday morning the world-renowned humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders complained that a plane carrying its portable hospital unit was re-routed by the US military through the Dominican Republic. This would cost a crucial 48 hours and an unknown number of lives.
On Sunday, Jarry Emmanuel, air logistics officer for the UN’s World Food Programme, said: “There are 200 flights going in and out every day, which is an incredible amount for a country like Haiti … But most flights are for the US military.”
We’ve been circulating throughout the city until 2:00 and 3:00 in the morning every night, evacuating patients, moving materials. There’s no UN guards. There’s no US military presence. There’s no Haitian police presence. And there’s also no violence. There is no insecurity.
To understand the US government’s obsession with “security concerns,” we must look at the recent history of Washington’s involvement there.
Long before the earthquake, Haiti’s plight has been comparable to that of many homeless people on city streets in the US: too poor and too black to have the same effective constitutional and legal rights as other citizens. In 2002, when a US-backed military coup temporarily toppled the elected government of Venezuela, most governments in the hemisphere responded quickly and helped force the return of democratic rule. But two years later, when Haiti’s democratically elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was kidnapped by the US and flown to exile in Africa, the response was muted.
Unlike the two centuries of looting and pillage of Haiti since its founding by a slave revolt in 1804, the brutal occupation by US marines from 1915 to 1934, the countless atrocities under dictatorships aided and abetted by Washington, the 2004 coup cannot be dismissed as “ancient history.” It was just six years ago, and it is directly relevant to what is happening there now.
The US, together with Canada and France, conspired openly for four years to topple Haiti’s elected government, cutting off almost all international aid in order to destroy the economy and make the country ungovernable. They succeeded. For those who wonder why there are no Haitian government institutions to help with the earthquake relief efforts, this is a big reason. Or why there are 3 million people crowded into the area where the earthquake hit. US policy over the years also helped destroy Haitian agriculture, for example, by forcing the import of subsidised US rice and wiping out thousands of Haitian rice farmers.
Aristide, the country’s first democratically elected president, was overthrown after just seven months in 1991, by military officers and death squads later discovered to be in the pay of the CIA. Now Aristide wants to return to his country, something that the majority of Haitians have demanded since his overthrow. But the US does not want him there. And the René Préval government, which is completely beholden to Washington, has decided that Aristide’s party – the largest in Haiti – will not be allowed to compete in the next elections (originally scheduled for next month).
Washington’s fear of democracy in Haiti may explain why the US is now sending 15,000 troops and prioritizing “security” over other needs.
This military occupation by US troops will raise other concerns in the hemisphere, depending on how long they stay – just as the recent expansion of the US military presence in Colombia has been met with considerable discontent and distrust in the region. And non-governmental organisations have raised other issues about the proposed reconstruction: understandably they want Haiti’s remaining debt cancelled, and grants rather than loans (the IMF has proposed a $100m dollar loan). Reconstruction needs will be in the billions of dollars: will Washington encourage the establishment of a functioning government? Or will it prevent that, channelling aid through NGOs and taking over various functions itself, because it of its long-standing opposition to Haitian self-rule?
But most urgently, there is a need for rapid delivery of water. The US air force has the capability to deliver enough water for everyone who needs it in Haiti, until ground supply chains can be established. The more water is available, the less likely there is to be fighting or rioting over this scarce resource. Food and medical supplies could also be supplied through air drops. These operations should be ramped up, immediately. There is no time to lose.
Aid workers frustrated with relief effort. The people are frustrated.
Aid is still not getting to the people 9 days and many are still not getting help.
They need food, they need water, they need shelter, they need medical help.
The aid workers need transportation, they need equipment to work with.
They don’t need 15,000 military personnel.
Again MFS Doctors without Borders who are professionals in disasters have had six Planes Carrying Vital Medical Supplies Are Re-routed
January 20 2010
Six Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) cargo planes loaded with vital medical material like antibiotics have been redirected to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. This will delay MSF staff’s ability to treat patients who urgently need it.
Medical aid should be a priority
International aid may at be last trickling, painfully slowly, into the rubble-strewn centre of Port-au-Prince. But in this filthy shanty town half an hour’s drive away, where families sleep five or six to small shacks, next to none has arrived. And the poorest of the poor complain that their plight is being forgotten.
“We don’t have doctors, we don’t have food, we don’t have water,” said Louis Jean Jaris, a 29-year-old resident. “The aid comes to Haiti, but it goes elsewhere. In Cité Soleil we are all victims, just like everyone else, but compared to the rest of the country, we are a low priority. To the people in power, we are not considered to be victims.”
If they are wondering why people are getting angry it’s no wonder. It has been 9 DAYS.
The US needs to get it’s bloody priorities straight. This is not a military invasion this is a rescue mission. Isn’t it? Or is it a military invasion just using the earthquake as an excuse.
US says will increase troops in Haiti to to above 15,000
January 21 2010
The amphibious assault ship USS Nassau (LHA 4) will be stationed in Haiti.
Why, Why, Why?
Amid growing concerns of Latin American leaders over the presence of the US military in Haiti, Washington plans to send 4,000 troops to the quake-hit country.
A statement from the US Second Fleet Wednesday stated that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, has made the decision to dispatch the troops.
The 2,000 sailors and 2,000 marines are from the Nassau Amphibious Ready Group and the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, according to the statement. Their deployment will increase the number of US troops in Haiti to above 15,000.
Three amphibious ships, the USS Nassau, the USS Mesa Verde and the USS Ashland, will support the latest mission, bringing the total number of US Navy and Military Sealift Command vessels to 20.
A 7.0-magnitude quake struck Haiti last week, killing at least 75,000 people and perhaps as many as 200,000. Almost 250,000 people were injured and around 1.5 million people are without shelter.
Meanwhile, the presence of the US military, which has taken command of distribution of humanitarian aid, has raised the ire of some South American leaders, with the presidents of Bolivia, Nicaragua and Venezuela condemning the US role.
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said Haiti seeks “humanitarian aid, not troops.”
Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez accused the US of seeking to occupy the quake-stricken nation. “The United States government is using a humanitarian tragedy to militarily occupy Haiti. I read somewhere that they even occupied the [presidential] palace.”
Bolivian leader Evo Morales said that he would seek UN condemnation of the “US military occupation.”
In Europe, France spoke out against the US role, demanding the United Nations to investigate and clarify the US military presence in Haiti.
Three days after the quake, US paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division took control of the main airport in the capital Port-au-Prince.
The US says its primary mission is to speed distribution of aid, in part by providing security at distribution points and escorting aid convoys.
In the past, Washington has been accused of interfering in Haitian internal affairs on many occasions. The US military played a role in the departure of the former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide before his second term was over in early 2004. Source
Seems this is preparing for war not aid. This should be questioned by everyone the world over.
People are wondering all over the world. What is really going on?
Aid workers are having a difficult time, getting to where they are needed.
If the US is going to take control of everything they had better get it together and soon.
This is Hurricane Katrina all over again. Now I know for sure.
The time factor is a real indication. When people get angry they accuse them of being violent blah blah blah and so the story of BS goes.
They nor the UN or NATO have been good to Haitians in the past.
Military personnel wold make them feel fearful if anything.
How stupid do the US, UN and NATO think we all are?
Soldiers in Haiti told to stop handing out food
By Jim Michaels
January 20, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Food handouts were shut off Tuesday to thousands of people at a tent city here when the main U.S. aid agency said the Army should not be distributing the packages.
It was not known whether the action reflected a high-level policy decision at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) or confusion in a city where dozens of entities are involved in aid efforts.
“We are not supposed to get rations unless approved by AID,” Maj. Larry Jordan said.
Jordan said that approval was revoked; water was not included in the USAID decision, so the troops continued to hand out bottles of water. The State Department and USAID did not respond to requests for comment.
Jordan has been at the airport supervising distribution of individual food packages and bottled water since his arrival last week. Each package provides enough calories to sustain a person for a day.
The food is flown by helicopter to points throughout the capital and distributed by paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division. At the tent city, set up at a golf course, more than 10,000 people displaced by the Haitian earthquake lay under makeshift tents. Each day, hundreds of people, many young children, line up for a meal.
Tuesday morning, the helicopters came only with water. Soldiers carried boxes of water in the hot sun and supervised Haitian volunteers who handed the supplies out. Source
This is a rescue mission, a humanitarian mission, not a military invasion which it seems it has become.
I read a story earlier that was fluffing up Israel, but back at home this is what they are doing. Aid workers are ‘being pushed out’ of Palestinian areas. Well isn’t that just fluffy. Considering they justfloodedGaza on January 18. They for the most part were not really helpful when it came to Haiti either. They for the most part were just as involved in past problems, as they assisted the US.
All of the above mentioned owe Haiti. I am sure some of the past deeds equal war crimes and crimes against humanity. They had better not fluff to much it makes them look like hypocrites.
Considering everything they have done, to those in Haiti in the past that is. It’s a long dreadful history.
Considering the size of Haiti, there must be something extremely important about it or the US and company would have allowed the people to be free. What is it that makes Haiti so special?
Could it be oil? Could it be it’s proximity to Cuba?
Help Haiti rebuild then leave them to be free. Stop stealing their resources. When they elect a new leader, don’t kidnap him.
Some how it reminds me all to often of Gaza and the West Bank.
Haiti: Small Victory for Shock Resistance
In response to the wave ofcriticism, the IMF has just issued a statement saying that they will try to turn the $100-million loan to Haiti into a grant.
__
Today, the IMF put out an announcement clarifying the terms of its new loan to Haiti–it’s “an interest-free loan of $100 million in emergency funds.” A spokesman for the IMF told me that “the US$100 million loan does not carry any conditionality. It is an emergency loan aimed at getting the Haitian economy back to function again…” The IMF’s managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said in a statement that the IMF would immediately work to cancel the entirety of Haiti’s debt ($265 million) to the fund: Source
February 22 2008
So what if anything has changed. Seems the earthquake is giving the US a reason to move in even more troops. How convenient. Haiti has something they want obviously if not oil, what?
After surviving more than 5 days in the rubble, two victims were pulled alive from the wreckage of a collapsed Haiti supermarket late on Sunday to applause from amazed onlookers. (Jan. 18)
Had help arrived sooner many more would have been saved. Unfortunately it took far to long for help to arrive.
One would thing after Hurricane Katrina and the Tsunami they would be better organized for such catastrophes.
Haiti text donations won’t get there until your billing cycle ends
Millions were raised in 48 hours for organizations like the Red Cross and Wyclef Jean’s Yele Haiti foundation. (You can watch Wyclef’s response to financial criticisms of his charity here.) As of Friday, people texting “Haiti” to 90999 had donated $8m to the Red Cross specifically for Haitian earthquake relief. The damage is immense, suffering in Haiti is off the charts bad, and Haitians desperately need the financial relief that these charities can provide. The bad news? Any donations made via text message to these charities won’t be forwarded to their intended recipients until after your billing cycle ends:
It could take up to 90 days. For the rest of the information go HERE
Fractured Narrative: Haitian Calm, American Cynicism
One can almost feel the disappointment amongst Western media mavens that earthquake-stricken Haitians have not, in fact, degenerated into packs of feral animals tearing each other to pieces. Day after day, every single possible isolated incident of panic, anger, “looting” (as the removal of provisions from ruined stores by starving people is called) and vigilantism has been highlighted — and often headlined — by the most “respectable” news sources.
If you need food and water etc, Yes you would breaking into a store and take it. That is not looting it is survival. I would do the same thing wouldn’t you.
During Hurricane Katrina some of the press said the same horrid things when in fact much of it was not true.
Some were even arrested for doing nothing wrong whatsoever. I remember.
Witness to a nightmare
Interview with Jesse Hagopian who was in Port-au-Prince with his 1-year-old son to visit his wife when the earthquake hit. His wife, an aid worker, works until the evening on most days, but by sheer luck, she came to the hotel where they were staying early on Tuesday–just minutes before the quake struck at 4:53 p.m. This spared Jesse and his family agonizing hours or days trying to find one another amid the chaos.
Port-au-Prince/Paris /New York, 17 January 2009—Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) urges that its cargo planes carrying essential medical and surgical material be allowed to land in Port-au-Prince in order to treat thousands of wounded waiting for vital surgical operations. Priority must be given immediately to planes carrying lifesaving equipment and medical personnel.
One has to wonder how many other Aid agency’s are having the same problem? This should be a priority. The US military is running the airport in Haiti.
Reporters were there almost immediately and then the military.
Specially trained international teams continue to search for and rescue trapped victims throughout Haiti, but many of those saved are in dire need of medical care. More relief organizations and troops are arriving, but with communication limitations and travel restrictions, the desperately needed food, water and supplies are not reaching people fast enough. The frustration over the delay has left many wondering if the U.S. has done enough to help, and who will take charge in the coming days to protect the injured and homeless?
Palestinians in Gaza set off for the Red Cross headquarters on Monday to offer donations and financial support for the victims of Haiti’s devastating earthquake on Tuesday.
WOW is all I can say to that one. It breaks my heart to know what they are going through, but this is very heart warming at the same time.
France is demanding the United Nations investigateand clarify the dominant US role in Haiti, after Washington deployed over 10,000 troops to the quake-hit country.
The demand came after US forces turned back a French aid plane carrying a field hospital from the main airport in the Haitian capital.
The Pentagon says it has deployed soldiers in Haiti to help victims of Tuesday’s earthquake. This comes as US paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division took control of the main airport in the capital Port-au-Prince on Friday.
The move has raised ire among aid agencies with extensive experience of operating in disaster zones.
“This is about helping Haiti, not about occupying Haiti,” France’s Cooperation Minister Alain Joyandet said in an emergency EU meeting concerning Haiti on Monday.
He added that he expects a UN decision on how governments should work together in Haiti, while demanding a clarification of the United States’ role in the Caribbean nation.
Joyandet’s remarks echo those made by Venezuela and Nicaragua that expressed “deep concern” over the US deployment of troops in Haiti.
US secretary of state Hillary Clinton whose country is also blamed for not being quick enough to send aid to the quake-hit nation has denied the occupation charges, stressing on Saturday that the White House had no intention of taking power from Haitian officials.
The US has been accused of interfering in Haitian internal affairs in the past.
The US military played a role in the departure of the former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide before his second term was over in early 2004. Aristide has described his departure as a kidnapping.
Last week’s 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti is estimated to have left some 200,000 people dead and more than 1.5 million homeless, with at least 70,000 bodies collected from the rubble so far. Source
Well the US has interfered many times. This is one I have a few more somewhere just have to find them. But this is a start. Haitian’s also have a fear of US soldiers and for good reason…. Seems no one has bothered to mention that of course.
Coincidentally this was just the day before the London Bombings 7/7 and was pretty much totally ignored by the media. I guess they thought no one would notice.
January 16 2010
Imagine 5 days and no help. Brings back memories of Katrina.
They were angry as well. They were hungry and desperate.
5 days is a long time to go without.
Much of the reporting after the earthquake in Haiti has been from the capital, Port-au-Prince.
But the devastation and the need for help is just as severe in the south of the country,
In the city of Carrefour, near the epicentre of the quake, no rescue teams are on site and angry residents have blocked the roads to protest against the absence of aid.
Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo reports from southern Haiti.
The United Nations says Haiti’s earthquake is the worst disaster it has ever had to deal with.
Aid is now pouring in, with a steady flow of relief getting through the nation’s only airport.
The World Food Programme says it expects to feed a million people. But survivors say help is not happening fast enough as dead bodies lie scattered on the capital’s streets.
Haiti mass graves receive unclaimed, unidentified bodies
January 15 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE
Every five minutes, a vehicle pulled up to the gates of Port-au-Prince’s cemetery, delivering another corpse to a mass grave dug by authorities trying to clear the broken city’s streets of the dead.
“We have lost any dignity in death,” said Mezen Dieu Justi, an old man barely able to contain his nausea and tears before the grim spectacle.
The massive earthquake that struck Haiti on Tuesday has produced a steady stream of bodies, with estimates of the death toll well into the tens of thousands.
Many families confronted with their final glimpse of a loved one simply lost control.
“It’s my father, my dear father,” screamed one young woman, who fainted at the sight of the mass grave filled with human bodies.
One woman, as though possessed, lowered herself into the grave saying she felt more comfortable among the dead. Bystanders eventually forced her back out again.
“We have lost our senses. Death has driven us insane,” said one Haitian, whose relative’s body had been transported to the grave for burial.
“For three days my sister was dead in her house. Finally we brought her here. We have lost hope of giving her a dignified burial, a coffin, the blessing of a priest,” sobbed Florence, 40, a teacher.
Across Port-au-Prince, the dead litter the streets, stripped of human dignity, decomposing and covered in flies.
The efforts of recently-arrived foreign aid workers seem almost inconsequential by comparison with the scale of the devastation wrought by the quake.
Their work is both a race against time to save people who may still be alive under the rubble strewn across the city and also an effort to transport overwhelming numbers of corpses to the nearest mass grave.
Morgue officials said they no longer have the means to move the bodies, forcing aid workers to transport scores of unidentified and dust-covered cadavers.
Families waited patiently as rescue teams dug through the rubble, waiting to see if they could recognize a loved one.
“The truth is that we don’t know what will be done with the dead,” said Joseph Tihaly, a Haitian volunteer coordinating the delivery and identification of corpses abandoned at the general hospital’s morgue.
The young student said numerous families had come seeking their relatives, but the majority of the bodies remained unclaimed and unidentified.
In one corner of the morgue, a Haitian man finished building a makeshift wooden coffin to hold his brother’s body.
“I will try to take him to our village, to bury him there,” he said.
At least two mass graves have been dug in the city to try to deal with the catastrophe. Haiti Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said he believed some 15,000 people had already been interred across the stricken capital.
But the sheer number of dead has simply overwhelmed all efforts, said Tihaly.
“Realistically, we don’t know when these bodies will be taken, and we don’t know by whom. It’s chaos and a breeding ground for infection,” he said.
By Amanda Kloer
What has been a slow crisis of poverty and enslavement for almost 250,000 child slaves in Haiti, known as restaveks, turned into an immediate crisis this week with the brutal 7.0 earthquake that hit the country. Mere hours after the news of the devastation in Haiti broke, America and countries around the world saw an outpouring of aid from international organizations and individuals. Groups have organized drives for everything from donations to shoes to volunteers.
But as we all get that warm and fuzzy feeling from helping our neighbors in their time of great need, it’s important to remember that millions of Haitians needed aid before this earthquake, and they’ll continue to need it long after the media fervor has died. And those with the greatest need will be the enslaved restaveks.
Restaveks are a huge part of Haitian society and the economy. They are usually children from extremely poor families who are sent away to work as domestic servants in wealthier homes. The children aren’t paid for their work, but provided shelter and a sometimes meager meal supply. In the best case scenarios, families will send their restavek children to school. But restaveks often work long days performing a variety of household tasks for nothing more that a meal or two a day. Two-thirds of restaveks are girls, and they are extremely vulnerable to rape and sexual abuse from the families who house and control them. The life of a restavek child in Haiti often varies between bleak and hopeless, and many children never successfully leave their slave conditions.
The United Nations and its non-governmental organization (NGO) partners today called yet again on Israel to immediately open crossings into the Gaza Strip to give Palestinians access to desperately needed materials, especially in view of the coming winter and rainy season.
“The winter will be particularly hard on the children of Gaza, whose capacity to withstand the rigours of a cold, wet winter has already been severely undermined by a marked deterioration of basic services and descent into poverty,” the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory, Maxwell Gaylard, said in a news release, the latest of countless UN appeals to reopen the crossings since Israel’s three-week war against Hamas last winter.
“With winter rains and cold weather now imminent, the people of Gaza are even more desperately in need of construction materials such as cement, roofing tiles and glass to build and repair homes destroyed and damaged in the Israeli military offensive of 2008-2009, as well as of regular supplies of fuel, electricity and clean water.”
More than two years of blockade since Hamas seized control of Gaza coupled with widespread destruction resulting from the war have caused severe damage to the homes, roads and utilities, including tens of thousands of homes damaged or destroyed, deterioration and further damage to already fragile and overloaded water, sanitation and electricity distribution networks, and a marked fall-off in the quality of essential services, the release said.
“Intensive discussions which the United Nations has conducted with the Government of Israel for the resumption of suspended building projects, which would provide much-needed housing and social services for the people of Gaza, have not yet yielded any positive outcome,” it added.
Nearly 1,400 Gazans were killed and more than 5,000 injured during the three-week offensive, which Israel says it launched to stop thousands of rockets fired by Hamas and other Palestinian militants into southern Israel.
The fighting left communities, families and children fearful and traumatized, many of them living in ruins, virtually destitute, and relying increasingly on the UN and its humanitarian partners for daily sustenance. Over 3,530 homes were destroyed, more than 2,850 severely damaged and 52,900 suffering minor damage. Without repair, winter winds and rain will render damaged homes uninhabitable, the release warned.
Mr. Gaylard and the NGOs called on the Israeli Government to allow in urgently-needed construction and repair materials, adequate supplies of industrial fuel for electricity generation, and essential items for the proper functioning of water and sanitation systems.
“The people of Gaza share with everyone else the right to dignified lives, free of indiscriminate and prolonged suffering. They should not be subjected to this continuation of collective punishment brought on by the blockade, Mr. Gaylard said.
Well We won’t hold our breath on Israel letting anything through.
They have not let much of anything through since their attack on Gaza and they never will. They haven’t for years.
So the Palistinians will starve, freeze and still lack proper medical care.
Nothing will change.
Netanyahu keeps making speeches blathering on about Peace.
He is a Hypocrite.He know nothing about peace. It’s a good line to fed the public but it is all lies. He has not taken one step forward towards peace. He just spins a good line for his adoring, ignorant, public to fed on. He will never keep his word on anything. He has already proven that.
He never stopped the Settlements, which means no peace just more confiscated Palestinian land and more strife for Palestinians.
The road to peace is not starving and continually punishing innocent people.
He has done nothing to even begin peace negotiations, absolutely nothing just talk, talk, talk, but no real action. So he can blather on all he wants but, there has been virtually no actions towards peace what so ever..
New Weiner Study Shows 151 Members of House and Senate Get the “Public Option” Now
Weiner Calls on GOP Opponents of the Public Option to Give Up Their Medicare
WASHINGTON, DC—A new study by Representative Anthony Weiner (D – Queens & Brooklyn), member of the Health Subcommittee and Co-Chair of the Caucus on the Middle Class, revealed that 151 members of the House and Senate currently receive government-funded; government-administered single-payer health care – Medicare.
On the list of recipients are 55 Republicans who have steadfastly opposed other Americans getting the public option, like the one they have chosen.
Weiner said, “Even in a town known for hypocrisy, this list of 55 Members of Congress deserve some sort of prize. They apparently think the public option is ok for them, but not anyone else.”
The list of congressional recipients of Medicare who also oppose the public option is below:
Rep. Ralph M. Hall,
Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett,
Rep. Sam Johnson,
Rep. C.W. Bill Young,
Rep. Howard Coble,
Sen. Jim Bunning,
Sen. Richard G. Lugar,
Rep. Don Young,
Sen. Charles E. Grassley,
Sen. Robert F. Bennett,
Rep. Vernon J. Ehlers,
Sen. Orrin G. Hatch,
Sen. Richard C. Shelby,
Rep. Jerry Lewis,
Sen. James M. Inhofe,
Rep. Ron Paul,
Rep. Henry E. Brown,
Sen. Pat Roberts,
Sen. George V. Voinovich,
Sen. John McCain,
Rep. Judy Biggert,
Sen. Thad Cochran,
Rep. Harold Rogers,
Rep. Dan Burton,
Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon,
Rep. Frank R. Wolf,
Sen. Christopher S. Bond,
Rep. Michael N. Castle,
Rep. Joe Pitts,
Rep. Tom Petri,
Sen. Lamar Alexander,
Rep. Doc Hastings,
Rep. Cliff Stearns,
Rep. Sue Myrick,
Rep. John Carter,
Sen. Mitch McConnell,
Sen. Jon Kyl,
Rep. Phil Gingrey,
Rep. Nathan Deal,
Rep. John Linder,
Rep. Kay Granger,
Rep. John L. Mica,
Rep. Walter B. Jones,
Sen. Jim Risch,
Rep. Ed Whitfield,
Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner,
Rep. Virginia Foxx,
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison,
Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite,
Sen. Saxby Chambliss,
Sen. Michael B. Enzi,
Rep. Elton Gallegly,
Rep. Donald Manzullo,
Rep. Peter T. King,
Rep. Ander Crenshaw,
How dare they oppose giving it to Americans, when they themselves use it.
Do check the comment on this thread. The poster has left some very vital information pertaining to this post.
The Bill is 1990 pages long. It’s long read. They are attempting to stop the pre-existing condition problem, insurance companies have been using against people.
These are refugees from Iraq and Afghanistan who traveled to Calais, hoping they could make it to Britain.
278 people have been detained by the French police, 132 are children.
This is the day they destroy the Calais refugee camp known as the Jungle. French riot police were apparently armed with flamethrowers, stun guns and tear gas.
At 7.40 am, dozens of vans accompanied by bulldozers began circling the camp.
Aproximatly 500 officers were at the site.
Camp refugees, many of whom were children, were dragged away by police officers and put into waiting buses. Others were escorted out.
Hundreds of police clear Calais migrant camp
By Katie Hodge
Hundreds of officers surrounded the camp at first light, rounding up dozens of people who had been living in the tent city on the edge of the Channel port.There were minor scuffles as the camp dwellers, some in tears, were led away.
Dozens of protesters had also gathered at the site ahead of the operation and began chanting slogans at the police.
Around 150 migrants were at the camp, standing quietly behind banners which declared: “We need shelter and protection, we want peace.”
But aid workers said the news that the French government was to close the camp, confirmed last night, prompted many more to flee.
As the police moved in, the activists began shouting: “No borders. No nation. No deportation.”
About a dozen migrants who were refusing to move were dragged and carried out of the camp by police.
Some migrants were still eating their breakfast in tents when police descended on the site.
The camp had been home to hundreds of mainly Afghan asylum seekers, some of them just children.
Home Secretary Alan Johnson said he was “delighted” about its closure.
Britain has ruled out taking them in, and Mr Johnson said genuine refugees should apply for asylum in the country where they entered the EU.
Speaking after talks in Brussels with his French counterpart Eric Besson yesterday, Mr Johnson said reports that Britain could be “forced” to take the immigrants were “wrong”.
EU justice commissioner Jacques Barrot had reportedly demanded a change in European law to allow a “significant number” to be fast-tracked into Britain.
But Mr Johnson said: “The UK has a robust system for dealing with both asylum seekers and immigration and provides protection to those who are genuinely in need.
“Reports that the UK will be forced to take illegal immigrants from the ‘jungle’ are wrong.
“Both countries are committed to helping individuals who are genuine refugees, who should apply for protection in the first safe country that they reach.
“We expect those who are not in need of protection to return home.”
However, Keith Best, chief executive of the Immigration Advisory Service charity, warned that shutting the camp would simply shift the problem to another part of Calais.
He said: “I remember seven years ago when (former) home secretary David Blunkett and the then French minister of the interior Nicolas Sarkozy congratulated themselves on the closure of the Red Cross centre at Sangatte, but the hundreds of asylum seekers merely moved to the dockside of Calais.
“The liquidation of the jungle will have the same transitory effect.”
“What is needed is a commitment by the French authorities at all levels to admit asylum seekers to their procedures promptly.
“At present it is very difficult to claim asylum in France as those to whom I spoke admitted.
“The French are not playing their part in allowing people to claim asylum in Calais, despite their obligation under the Refugee Convention.”
Moments before the police launched today’s operation, about 100 people were huddled around a fire in an attempt to ward off the cold as the Muslim call to prayer rang out.
Fifteen-year-old Sail Pardes, from eastern Afghanistan, has been at the camp for six months and is hoping to make his way to England.
He said: “The most important thing is to get to England. I want to go to school and become a better person.”
Sylvie Copyans, of aid group Salam, said some of the immigrants have been in the camp for up to eight months.
She said: “It’s exactly like when they closed Sangatte. It’s now exactly the same. They are saying no immigrants in Calais, they can’t stay here. But if they are made to leave they will just go to another squat. It’s more and more difficult every day.”
She added: “They are young, they have a lot of hopes and wishes. They are brave and courageous. They often have no family, that is difficult for them.”
Some camp dwellers were dragged away by police officers and put into waiting buses. Others were escorted out.
Protesters, some in tears, shouted slogans at the police, including: “Shame on France.”
According to aid agencies, the immigrants were being taken in buses to police stations to be processed.
From there they will be sent back to the countries where they entered European Union.
It was thought that many will end up in Greece, one of the main points of entry for the immigrants.
But aid agencies have predicted that many will end up back on the streets.
The French authorities said there were 500-600 officers involved in today’s operation.
They detained 278 people, of whom 132 declared themselves children, according to the Prefect of Pas-de-Calais Pierre de Bousquet.
The adults were being taken to various police stations and the children to “special centres”, he said.
Four police divisions had been drafted in to help, including the national anti-riot force the CRS.
French immigration minister Eric Besson was expected to speak to journalists in Calais later today.
As I was wandering around I noticed how many didn’t want these people in their country. Not naming names or anything. When ‘I first noticed the story, I went all over.
These people have come from war torn countries. There are a few million displaced civilians because of the Iraq war and Afghanistan..
With every war there are always refugees. Now what is also interesting many of these same folks, who were complaining about the refugees were supportive of the wars.
Now however because there is a refugee problem, they don’t want to help them.
Well if you don’t want refugees don’t start wars.
Many of the children may be orphans. They can’t send children back to Afghanistan at this point in time. Many people thought they should be just shipped back.
There really may not be much for them to go back to and if their parents have been killed there is even less reason for them to go back.
We are not helping them. We are doing more harm then good.
Then there is the DU and the radiation from the Bunker Busters.
Well more will get cancer and die.
It will also affect the soldiers who are in those areas.
I think it is time to face those facts.
In Afghanistan 53 % are living in poverty and rising each year.
Unemployment has risen to 40% way up from 2000 when it was only 8%.
They have about 8,000 dead and over 59,000 who were injured.
They also have a heroin problem again. The Taliban as awful as they may be, had destroyed all the poppy fields.
Now Iran and Iraq have a heroin problem. Under Saddam heroin was never a problem in Iraq.
The heroin is now being shipped out to North America and European countries. So now they have a heroin problem too.
Now folks are complaining about the refugees.
Well what did they expect?
Every war creates millions of refugees.
Remembering all the other wars around the world that is a fact of life.
My heart goes out to them.They have suffered so much tragedy and loss.
This the areal View of the Camp. Not a very special place, but to the refugees it was home and it was safe. Safer then the war zones they came from.
What will happen to them now is unknown. They didn’t start the wars they are the victims of it.
Now they have been arrested by the very people who they thought might help them.
Seems no matter where they go they are not welcome.
Nato however had no problem invading their countries.
Nato had no problem destroying their homes and their lives.
They had no problem polluting their homeland with DU and Radiation from Bunker Busters.
No problem bombing their homes.
No problem killing their friends and realtives.
No problem at all.
They ran away from their home land, because they couldn’t take the wars anymore. They want and need to feel safe. Well I guess they will be safe in prison.
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