Here it is just 6:00 a.m. in Vancouver, and I already have a must-read. Via Open Salon.com: Haiti: Ezili Dantò on Wash Post Cholera editoria. Ezili Danto is the founder and leader of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network, and her blog is on my Bloggers list. This is a long, articulate and angry polemic. Excerpt and then a comment:
The Washington Post editorial entitled "Really quite disastrous," supporting that more money be handed over to the NGOs on behalf of Haiti is simply unprofessional if not immoral.
It is filled with inaccuracies and false declarations. It uses its powerful Washington D.C. platform and journalistic weight to make dangerous, irresponsible assertions and recommendations for Haiti hurt cholera victims.
In advocating the expansion of more cholera vaccines in Haiti, the editorial claims that:
"It would take just $40 million to administer oral vaccines to every person in Haiti...But until recently, international health organizations...preferred a systemic infrastructure fix."
The US and international community ruling Haiti behind UN guns, did not FIRST decide to fix infrastructure, that is, clean up the water infrastructure in Haiti the UN poisoned. That's untrue.
It would be more appropriate to say the UN, along with the silence of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US with the active involvement of the Center for Disease Control and and Prevention (CDC) combine with the help of the unquestioning corporate media, like Washington Post, spent most of their time figuring out how to blame the cholera outbreak on Haiti than anything else. (HLLN analysis of Times’ cholera article)
"The source of the cholera outbreak in Haiti" they uniformly opined, was not important. Or, these internationals would simply whine and wail to all and sundry the racist, capricious and facile catch-all: "Let's not play the blame game!"
The UN, Obama's State Department, Paul Farmer, Billy and Hillary of the Bill and Hillary UN-Fund for Haiti, of course, back up the official UN position that the UN is not legally nor morally responsible for bringing a deadly disease to Haiti that's killed over 7,000, and infected more than 550,000 in less than two years.
This perhaps clues us into why the Washington Post editorial maintains: "Groups representing thousands of Haitian cholera victims have demanded millions of dollars of reparations from the United Nations, citing the disease’s introduction by the peacekeepers. But the United Nations’ money, if it manages to raise any, would be more profitably spent on a much more aggressive cholera vaccination program."
Endorsing the profiteering
The editorial seems written by the big pharmaceutical lobbyists or their patron doctors. It maintains that justice for the Haiti cholera victims is "more profitably served" if the UN gives, whatever monies it manages to raise to pay for the damages it caused when it poisoned Haiti's waterways and the Haiti cholera victims, back to Paul Farmer's pharmaceutical friends to buy their own drugs. That's clearly more just, presumably, than awarding money damages to the hurt Black Haitian and systematically detoxifying the land and waterways the UN troops poisoned?
This level of indifference and proposed profiteering is almost as alarming as that of the un-named "groups representing thousands of Haitian cholera victims." That group is led by the Institute For Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), has the UN-big pharmaceutical and CDC-affiliated doctor, Paul Farmer on its board and claims to be the lead lawyers defending the human rights of the Haiti cholera victims.
I generally agree with her views about the editorial and the attitudes behind it. But I'm struck by the criticism of IJDH, which she goes on to describe as "carpetbaggers and scalawags." This reflects a complexity in Haiti cholera politics that I hadn't been aware of.
