Patrick Elie (who has taught me much of what I know about Haiti)was in Toronto last night giving the Toronto Haiti Action Coalition an update on what is happening in Haiti.
Patrick came in So Ann's stead (I interviewed her in prison in 2005). So Ann needed to rest, according to her doctors, after a tremendous burst of activity following her two years in prison (trips to New York, Florida, Montreal).
Some highlights from his talk.
The best analysis of the 2004 coup in Haiti, in my opinion, was by Peter Hallward's "Option Zero in Haiti" in New Left Review. That article anchored my own analysis of what happened in Haiti and I found it immensely helpful in all the work I did. I thought there was a need for a longer analysis and I set about writing one in 2005. Other things intervened and I didn't end up completing it, and I was very excited to learn that Peter Hallward's book, "Damming the Flood", will be coming out soon.
It would take the International Republican Institute to make the analogy, but then again, I suppose it was a Republican who said 'if you're not with us, you're with the terrorists'.
Maybe Weisbrot touched a nerve?
Another nice blog brought to you by Joe Emersberger. Read his letter to the UK Independent with his brief introduction, below.
Happy New Year. Sorry about going AWOL. Let's just get straight back to business.
Things are happening very fast in Haiti.
I've never met Joe Emersberger, but he's a tireless letter-writer, relentlessly logical, interested in Canada's role in the world and the Americas, and so I can't help but encourage his move towards article-writing and blogging. Here's a short one he sent as a guest blog for the Killing Train:
WHY WOULD CANADA HELP HAITI'S POOR?
by Joe Emersberger
First, today's the 4th anniversary of 10/7, the day the US began bombing Afghanistan. This isn't often seen as a turning point the way 9/11/01 or the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was. But maybe it should be.
I'm back. I had written a long piece with some impressions, but then I closed my browser before saving. So... more later.
[from port au prince]
Last week we talked to Desmond Molloy, an old soldier who heads the 'DDR' program for MINUSTAH, the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti. 'DDR' stands for Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration. Molloy's previous experience, among other conflicts, was in Sierra Leone. There, he explained, there were two armed sides - rebels and the government - waging a political and military conflict. In such conflicts opponents try to maximize advantages anticipating a solution, either by negotiation and treaty or total victory for one side and defeat for the other.
The Southeast
We spent the weekend outside Port au Prince in the Southeast - in the city of Jacmel. Jacmel operates according to a slightly different logic. People are keen to tell you that things are a little less polarized there, unlike Port au Prince. Also unlike Port au Prince, there is 24-hour electricity.
That latter is something CIDA, the Canadian International Development Agency, might want to take credit for. CIDA contracted with Quebec's energy company, Hydro-Quebec, to improve the electricity infrastructure in and around Jacmel. Impressed, we thought we would visit the hydroelectric facility, a small dam in Jacmel's hinterland that produces some 1/7 of the capacity for the region (most of the rest is geothermal). The facility hadn't been working though, since September 12. The man who was watching the place while they waited for a spare part to repair the machinery couldn't tell us about the Canadian participation in the project.
The road between Port au Prince and Jacmel is in bad shape. We had been told that Canadian firms had a contract for improvement of some of the road, as had the Taiwanese. The Taiwanese section was complete, but the Canadian section was not.
These two problems were enough to upset Dr. Georges Frantz Large, an eye doctor and Senate candidate in the upcoming elections who also happens to be the President of the Chamber of Commerce for the Southeast. We met him at the hotel he owns, where he ensured us that he was no communist - but that he was unhappy with the coup in 2004 and the international community's participation in it, which he views as punishment for Haiti's original sin of liberating itself in 1804. Another Jacmel businessman, Eric Denis, wondered how Canada could claim it was helping Haiti when it was the ultimate destination for so much of Haiti's human resources. There are more Haitian medical doctors in Canada than there are in Haiti, Denis said. If Canada wanted to help, why not hand over money for those doctors to work in Haiti itself? Denis, a member of the elite, said his own class had lost money from the coup. His hotel is operating at 35% of capacity, where it had operated at 65% before. He thinks that even those elites who helped orchestrate the coup are making less money than they had before.
Of course, they also have more power - maybe it is worth taking a hit to profits to prevent loss of control of the future of the country, which is what they believed Aristide threatened.