What can one say about the misery, the sheer horror, of what is happening in Haiti right now? It is as if the 
planet itself has seen fit to kick them in the teeth when they were down. I don’t want to write even five more words before encouraging anyone who reads this blog to donate to relief efforts in any way you see fit. (My personal recommendation would be to support Partners in Health, but choose whichever means you prefer.)
Aside from the devastation and massive human suffering, the most impressive element of this catastrophe is the hypocrisy demonstrated by people in the United States who have been primarily responsible for the immiseration of Haitians over the past few decades. President Obama is correct when he describes how Haiti is “tied” to the United States historically, but he might more accurately have used the term “chained” – a sickening litany of occupation, subjugation, and sabotage that stretches back to the dawn of that nation’s independence. Just to focus on the most recent phase of this ugly relationship, it is important to remember that the Bush I administration supported the 1991 coup that ousted Haiti’s first popularly-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and ushered in a reign of terror marked by unspeakable brutality on the part of the Junta and paramilitary organizations like FRAP.
While Clinton is credited with returning Aristide to power, his administration turned a blind eye to fuel shipments to the coup regime of Raoul Cedras while insisting that Aristide return under conditions that would result in deeper penury for the Haitian people. That was a bitter pill for the Haitian people, who had taken 
great risks in very dark times to organize the Lavalas political movement that brought Aristide to the presidency in the first place, and subsequently paid a high price at the hands of the U.S.-sanctioned coup regime.
Ten years later, after Aristide had returned to power and had begun steering Haiti away from the neoliberal model that had been strangling it for decades, the Bush administration supported yet another coup, staged in part from the Dominican Republic, that brought a kleptocratic business-based elite back to power which, once again, looted the nation and persecuted Aristide supporters. More help from Uncle Sam. With a severely weakened government, by 2008 there were food riots, and now Haitians live on something like $2 a day.
It sickens me to see the crocodile tears of politicians in this country over the misery that they helped make possible. An even greater nausea comes over me at the thought of W. Bush and Clinton coordinating relief efforts. But, for the nonce, we can only try to help as best we can, by supporting those groups who will help Haitians not only recover but build their social institutions back up again.
luv u,
jp
