Mar 30
What do Haiti, the Ethiopian famine, Live Aid and the destruction of the New International Economic Order of the 1970s have in common? Vijay Prashad, Professor at Trinity College, Hartford and author of The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, supplies the answer in this revealing commentary.
In December 1984, I walked into the HMV store on London’s Oxford Street to spend a little discretionary money on an LP. Other albums drew me, but one had an advantage….It combined the talents of all the major “Top of the Pops” singers onto one song. It had to be Bob Geldof’s Do They Know It’s Christmas?…
Mar 28
Even as a fund-raising initiative he organised with One Caribbean Media Limited has raised substantial funds for Haiti, Ambassador Reginald Dumas has reported that Caricom’s relief effort in Leogane has ‘collapsed’. Reports by Trevor Yearwood in the Barbados NationNews.
NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANISATIONS (NGOs) bent on enriching themselves, CARICOM’s “collapsed” presence, and aid agencies trying to outdo each other have added to the problems of the Haiti relief effort. This complaint was made Thursday by the man United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan named his special advisor on Haiti in 2004, former Trinidadian diplomat Reginald Dumas.
$1.1 million! This is the sum which the One Caribbean Media (OCM) network and the Nation Publishing Company have raised for the Haiti relief effort. A cheque covering this amount was presented yesterday to former Trinidad diplomat and United Nations advisor on Haiti, Reginald Dumas, for funding of projects in the earthquake-devastated country.
Mar 25
Bill Clinton may be Haiti’s “co-reconstruction czar”
A message from Camille Chalmers of PAPDA summarises a report in the Miami Herald of March 23 giving details of the ‘Reconstruction Plan’ for Haiti likely to be approved at the donor conference to be held in Miami on March 31.
Central to the plan is the creation of a Commission dominated by Western governments and financial institutions donors and supported by a full-time ‘reconstruction czar’ who is likely to be Bill Clinton…
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Mar 24
Some of the advice for how Haiti ought to rebuild after the earthquake sounds hauntingly familiar, echoing the same bad development advice that Haiti has received for decades - even before the nation faced its current devastating situation. To avoid repeating the past failures, we would be wise to review how previous aid models led down the wrong path…
Mar 24
The “free press’ in Europe and the Americas - the one that lied shamelessly about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or described the putschist regime of Micheletti in Honduras as “interim” - has redoubled its ferocious campaign against Cuba. As a result, it’s important to distinguish between the true reason for it, and the pretext…
Mar 22
The author recalls his experience of the Grenada Revolution from the point of view of a key leader of the Working People’s Alliance in neighbouring Guyana. What follows is a participant’s account of how events in Grenada crossed and impacted unfolding developments on the Left in Guyana and Suriname. His recollections and analyses of the Grenada Revolution are thus filtered through the agitations against the dictatorship of Forbes Burnham in Guyana; the arson trial of Roopnaraine, Rodney and Omawale (1979-81); the assassination of Rodney (1980); the WPA’s early links with Desi Bouterse who led the Sergeant’s Revolt in Suriname (1980) and who seemed to offer a popular Left anti-imperialist and non-aligned path, and the hope of a break with ethnic politics; the 1982 killings by Bouterse’s revolutionary government of 15 opposition leaders soon after a visit to Suriname by Grenada’s Prime Minister Maurice Bishop; and finally, the author’s mission to mediate the crisis in Grenada.
Mar 22
The January 11, 2010 earthquake which destroyed much of Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, was so devastating that the issue confronting the country and the wider region is how to reconstruct the city, revitalize the political system of the country, and rebuild a country that has been ravaged by human rapaciousness and natural disaster…
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Clinton apologises for neo-liberal policies that destroyed Haiti’s rice production Jonathan Katz
Haitian Organisations Decry Total Exclusion from Donor Conferences on Haitian Reconstruction CEPR
Mar 19
In light of the resolution regarding Cuba adopted by the European Parliament on March 11th, on behalf of intellectuals, academics, activists, artists, and critical thinkers who belong to the Network in Defense of Humanity we declare (1) That we share the sensibilities expressed by European parlamentarians regarding political prisoners, and join them in calling for the unconditional liberation of all political prisoners, throughout the world, including those held by countries which are members of the European Union…
Mar 18
Venezuela’s election is not until September, but the international campaign to delegitimise the government has already begun..
