Tag Oppression

Entries 3 Total

Israel’s greatest loss: its moral imagination

Jun 13, ’10 10:40 AM

Henry Sieg­man, writ­ing for Haaretz:

When I man­aged to get over the shock of that exchange, it struck me that the invoc­a­tion of the Hitler era was actu­ally a fright­en­ingly apt and sear­ing ana­logy, although not the one my friend inten­ded. A mil­lion and a half civil­ians have been forced to live in an open-air prison in inhu­man con­di­tions for over three years now, but unlike the Hitler years, they are not Jews but Palestini­ans. Their jail­ers, incred­ibly, are sur­viv­ors of the Holo­caust, or their des­cend­ants. Of course, the inmates of Gaza are not destined for gas cham­bers, as the Jews were, but they have been reduced to a debased and hope­less existence.

Fully 80% of Gaza’s pop­u­la­tion lives on the edge of mal­nu­tri­tion, depend­ing on inter­na­tional char­it­ies for their daily nour­ish­ment. Accord­ing to the UN and World Health author­it­ies, Gaza’s chil­dren suf­fer from dra­mat­ic­ally increased mor­bid­ity that will affect and shorten the lives of many of them. This obscen­ity is a con­sequence of a delib­er­ate and care­fully cal­cu­lated Israeli policy aimed at de-developing Gaza by des­troy­ing not only its eco­nomy but its phys­ical and social infra­struc­ture while seal­ing it her­mit­ic­ally from the out­side world.

Par­tic­u­larly appalling is that this policy has been the source of amuse­ment for some Israeli lead­ers, who accord­ing to Israeli press reports have jok­ingly described it as “put­ting Palestini­ans on a diet.” That, too, is remin­is­cent of the Hitler years, when Jew­ish suf­fer­ing amused the Nazis.

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Cancel Haiti’s debt

Jan 30, ’10 6:10 PM

Can­cel Haiti’s Debt peti­tion — Oxfam International

Alex von Tun­zel­mann, writ­ing for The Times, explains how Haiti became so indebted in the first place:

The appalling state of the coun­try is a dir­ect res­ult of hav­ing offen­ded a quite dif­fer­ent celes­tial author­ity — the French. France gained the west­ern third of the island of His­pa­ni­ola — the ter­rit­ory that is now Haiti — in 1697. It planted sugar and cof­fee, sup­por­ted by an unpre­ced­en­ted increase in the import­a­tion of African slaves. Eco­nom­ic­ally, the res­ult was a suc­cess, but life as a slave was intol­er­able. Liv­ing con­di­tions were squalid, dis­ease was rife, and beat­ings and abuses were uni­ver­sal. The slaves’ life expect­ancy was 21 years. After a dra­matic slave upris­ing that shook the west­ern world, and 12 years of war, Haiti finally defeated Napoleon’s forces in 1804 and declared inde­pend­ence. But France deman­ded repar­a­tions: 150m francs, in gold.

For Haiti, this debt did not sig­nify the begin­ning of free­dom, but the end of hope. Even after it was reduced to 60m francs in the 1830s, it was still far more than the war-ravaged coun­try could afford. Haiti was the only coun­try in which the ex-slaves them­selves were expec­ted to pay a for­eign gov­ern­ment for their liberty. By 1900, it was spend­ing 80% of its national budget on repay­ments. In order to man­age the ori­ginal repar­a­tions, fur­ther loans were taken out — mostly from the United States, Ger­many and France. Instead of devel­op­ing its poten­tial, this deformed state pro­duced a parade of nefar­i­ous lead­ers, most of whom gave up the insur­mount­able task of try­ing to fix the coun­try and looted it instead. In 1947, Haiti finally paid off the ori­ginal repar­a­tions, plus interest. Doing so left it des­ti­tute, cor­rupt, dis­astrously lack­ing in invest­ment and polit­ic­ally volat­ile. Haiti was trapped in a down­ward spiral, from which it is still impossible to escape. It remains hope­lessly in debt to this day.

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Airdrops finally begin in Haiti

Jan 19, ’10 8:35 AM

U.S. Defence Sec­ret­ary Robert Gates on the 15th Jan:

It seems to me that without hav­ing any struc­ture on the ground in terms of dis­tri­bu­tion, that an air­drop is simply going to lead to riots as people try and go after that stuff … It seems to me that’s a for­mula for con­trib­ut­ing to chaos rather than pre­vent­ing it.

People are dying of star­va­tion and dis­ease but they’re not allowed any sup­plies because the head of the armed ser­vices of Amer­ica, now the con­trol­ler of Haitian air­space, thinks they can’t be trusted.

This is what hap­pens when you leave author­it­ari­ans in con­trol of a human­it­arian mission.

The lack of air­drops in these crit­ical few days has also helped to cre­ate a self-fulfilling proph­ecy of dis­order, to be “fixed” by out­siders. They’ve already mil­it­ar­ised this relief effort and based on their his­tory in Haiti I don’t think the the Amer­ic­ans can be trus­ted one bit. Unfor­tu­nately Haitians don’t have much choice at the moment.

Lim­ited air­drops finally began yes­ter­day but it will be too little too late for many.

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