“He is a Haitian and, as such, is free to return home”
Well, at least his nationality-based Right to Return must be good news for, oh I don’t know, any other Haitians ready to come back but having unaccountable administrative difficulties with the process. If Duvalier can but this other person still couldn’t, that would bespeak creepy imperial shenanigans, right?
How could fucking Duvalier, a man responsible for certain unpleasantness, have been allowed back from France? To a country that once promised to make him face justice should he dare show his face? Right now, true, France is demanding President Préval obey orders with regard to the results of some already-utterly-fucked-less-than-credible-&-should-never-have-been-held-under-such-circumstances elections, to favour Martelly, France’s preferred Duvalier-&-Macoutisme-nostalgic candidate, but let’s not espouse conspiracy theories: ‘it’s hard to believe, even under Sarkozy, that France and the international community would stoop so low diplomatically as to encourage Duvalier to return to Haiti for that purpose’.
Oh my, absolutely. Who can imagine France, or the ‘international community’, stooping so low? Allow a favoured mass-murdering dictator to return as a bullying tactic? Pfff. It’s all honourable intentions & the occasional tragic unforeseen consequence with them.
I mean, it’s not like the UN troops, who are totally there to help Haitans & never perpetrate massacres or impose martial rule against insurgent masses, were there to provide armed protection at Duvalier’s ahem ‘surprise’ arrival. Oh wait.
Update on Haiti: Ahead of Schedule
within 6 weeks, articles will start to appear stating that the rumours have gotten even more out of hand, & that people in Port-au-Prince are now claiming that the cholera is a bioweapon designed to deliberately wipe out the Haitian poor. This notion, mooted as it might be by a few people, will be offered up with sad headshakes as evidence for Anglo-American media consumers of the credulity of the Haitian masses…
Six weeks? Pfft.
Update on Haiti: The Tao of Empire
More on those false rumours that credulous natives kept believing. Leaked expert evidence might appear to very precisely vindicate what Haitians have been saying all along, as part of their long-running campaign against eating imperial shit. But those who believe this would lead to embarrassment reckon without the vatic unflappability of the UN. The international community that denied ‘elementary scientific fact’ about the disease & incredibly claimed it was unimportant where the dashed inconvenient thing came from in the first place, instead stressing its own indispensable contributions to the anti-cholera effort, now placidly insists that all things must remain in harmony and balance, that it has ‘neither accepted nor dismissed’ the findings of its own culpability.
Yes, Grasshopper. Ponder that profundity.
If it were not for such sophisticated quantum-exonerative insights, we might be forced to conclude that rather than being yet more grist for the depiction mill enthusiastically churning out racist caricatures of baying mobs, Haitians have long had a pretty good idea what’s being done to them, by whom, & why.
Typical. The benighted natives of Haiti, prone, we have had it explained, to outbreaks of random savagery, are with their foolish & random acts of violence only hurting themselves. But then, you know, they are irresponsible voodoo-practicing child-neglecters with a ‘progress-resistant culture’. Poor, poor UN, trying so hard to save them. & anti-UN riots, because of ‘false rumours’ blaming them among other things for the cholera outbreak, are the thanks they get.
A thousand stentorian reports make clear that the Haitians believe such nonsense because they are simple folk: they’re ‘easily manipulated’; they are being directed, trying to blame someone. Like children. & these riots are ‘politically motivated’, anyway, ‘traditional spoilers’ trying to sabotage the upcoming elections.
Tchah. If only Haitians could be made to understand their ‘misconception’ - the UN has denied all cholera-spreading responsibility, so that’s that. & anyway, it says uncovering the source of the cholera isn’t a priority. Haitians need to see ‘that the peacekeeping missions from around the world … are there to help them rebuild their nation as quickly as possible’.
Yeah, Haitians. Stupid & ungrateful.
Well now.
Anarchists, troublemakers & world-renowned public health experts might suggest that finding the source of the cholera is in fact a good idea, & the abjuring of that method politics, not hippocratic rigour.
Showboaters or internationally respected investigative media outlets could document the source of those ‘rumours’, the half-arsed sanitation on a UN base where toilets leak into the river where the outbreak started. It might seem in poor taste for ‘US experts’ to patiently advise Haitians to ‘drink, use clean water’ (thanks for that) when they are literally being fed the UN’s shit.
In any case. Whether it was or was not this particular UN troop who imported the killer disease, their shooting dead Haitians doesn’t help. & besides, the spread of cholera is hardly unrelated to years of imperially maintained mass poverty.
Killjoys & troublemakers might aver that blaming the UN for death squads & anti-democratic invasions was not without absolute justification. That this ‘politically motivated’ complaining about elections that disallow legitimately elected popular leaders in exile to stand is in fact fighting for democracy.
A prediction: within 6 weeks, articles will start to appear stating that the rumours have gotten even more out of hand, & that people in Port-au-Prince are now claiming that the cholera is a bioweapon designed to deliberately wipe out the Haitian poor. This notion, mooted as it might be by a few people, will be offered up with sad headshakes as evidence for Anglo-American media consumers of the credulity of the Haitian masses, as articles of the same genre do about African Americans. Because after all, no US government ever deliberately experimented on the poor or secretly used black people as petri dishes for syphilis or experimented with biological race war &c &c &c.
If that sort of thing had happened, then one might think that the Haitian riots were a fightback; justified rage; a shouted answer ‘No’ to the instruction, that has been repeated over many years, by the imperial rich to the Haitian poor: ‘Continue dying’.
Tout moun se moun.
It’s funny because it’s true! Awesome. & that was before the earthquake. Can you imagine how funny it must be there now?
By the way it’s ok because these aren’t the Coulters & Malkins & Becks (you know they’re just awful). These are totally down-to-earth & support Obama & stuff, so this is still funny, the dead starving children thing.
The sad necessity of empire
‘If it’s Haitian people [ - who ‘drift with no purpose’ -] taking care of the money, they will only take care of their clan’.
Really the US has no choice but to take control. More control, that is. ’Can Bill Clinton Keep Corruption in Haiti in Check?’ Oh, can he can he? Because unlike the purposeless & drifting Haitians, American ‘people’ do not take care only of their clan. Certainly not the Clintons.
Yet doe I feare thy Nature
The white Christ of Cambodia speaketh for the wretched.
‘Haitians in the slums would tell you that their most fervent wish is for jobs. A few dozen major shirt factories could be transformational for Haiti.’
But his most urgent counsel is for enwretchers.
‘That idea (sweatshops!) may sound horrific to Americans. But it’s a strategy that has worked’.
Yes. That is why Haiti suffers. Excess Milke of American kindness.
Speech act
Contents are descriptions of:
- One (1) act of deadly violence by the armed wing of the state.
- One (1) explicit claim by Red Cross of no ‘security issues at all’.
Title: Haitian Violence Hampers Earthquake Relief Efforts
Weaponised charity
Official: We Have Reason to be Proud of the American Response in Haiti.
- Keeping out Caribbean Community emergency aid mission
- Keeping out aid flights while US military take over
- Keeping out a field hospital
- Keeping starving from aid
- Keeping in destitute desperate dying
Adjectives: compassionate; aid; humanitarian. The noun is telling.
