644 million. Donations for Haiti to private organizations have exceed $644 million. Over $200 million has gone to the Red Cross, who had 15 people working on health projects in Haiti before the earthquake. About $40 million has gone to Partners in Health, which had 5,000 people working on health in Haiti before the quake.

— "Haiti Numbers -- 27 Days After the Quake", Bill Quigley

I've been getting email updates directly from Vivian at Matthew 25 House:

Don Lafont, and Lynn Blair-Anton, the members of our volunteer mobile clinic, left yesterday. It was difficult to see them go. Every day for two weeks, they packed up needed medical supplies in a tub, bags, and boxes and went work in various areas throughout the city. No one was ever turned away.

We had a fresh medical team that arrived from New Jersey. They had planned to work in a different area of the country where a large influx of patients was expected to be evacuated from the U.S. Comfort hospital ship. That did not occur, and we were fortunate because the field hospital here was shorthanded. The first day they split up into two teams. One group went to an orphanage. Like others in Haiti, as well as families, most children in orphanages sleep outside on the ground. The doctors were able to at least check them over, provide antibiotics where needed, and give them vitamins. Again, the need for tents is urgent! We still have not received the promised vinyl sheeting to at least cover the tops of the sheet tents.

Since then the team has worked in the field hospital of Matthew 25. Julie Morrison, a Doctor of Physical Therapy and a member of the New Jersey team, has been invaluable in helping the amputees. Julie has been able to rewrap stumps so that they will eventually be able to hold a prosthesis, and also has been working with each patient so that they learn exercises particular to their new disability that will strengthen their muscles. Before her arrival they would just be lying down. She has them up and walking. At first they were really afraid, in pain and not used to their body’s new imbalance, but after three days they can walk on their crutches for more than 300 feet, and also climb up a step. It seems strange to refer to someone who has lost one or more limbs as “fortunate”, but the fact that those here are already learning to cope, to wrap their own stumps in the particular way necessary for accepting a prosthetic makes them so much more fortunate than the hundreds and hundreds of others.

Something that happened the day before yesterday made me and many others very angry about the arrogance of the United States government. The day before yesterday several thousand Haitians arrived at the U.S. embassy because (as we heard it) there was a rumor that travel visas were being issued. The embassy response was to blockade not only the embassy compound, but the whole road that fronts it. This region of the metro area of the city has three main “trunk” roads. The embassy is located on one of these. To close it off for something like that was a terrible thing to do to the people having to function in this vital area. I needed to go out to buy supplies, and had to turn around after almost two hours in traffic, advancing less than a mile. Pat had started out to pick up the medical supply order for three clinics, and he too, could get nowhere, and had to turn back.

( more )

- Two million people need food. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon promised that by the end of January, the World Food Program and related organizations would feed at least half of those. In fact, the number fed was 600,000. "It has been slower than anyone hoped or expected," UN humanitarian aid co-ordinator John Holmes said.

- Ban was also pushing a cash-for-work program. Jobs are to be created clearing the rubble at $4 to $5 a day. He appealed for $41-million for this program. By end January, $4.3-million had been donated.

- A "donor" conference for Haiti last April, 2009, after hurricane season, saw $402-million pledged. Actual disbursements were $61-million, about 15 per cent of funds promised. This is quite typical of many such pledges, not just to Haiti. Typically as well, we rarely hear of these broken promises.

— "Some facts Stephen Harper should have on Haiti", The Globe and Mail (includes many more points)

There's this woman who I've met a few times now through activist events in the city. Her name's Melanie, and she's a professor at University of Toronto -- specifically, a History professor specializing in slavery, gender, race and class relations in the 18th and 19th century Caribbean. I first heard her speak at an ALBA panel a few months ago, where she spoke about Haiti in the context of ALBA.

I confess that I'm totally entranced with the easy style with which she's able to put a concept out for discussion in its full complexity, and yet still make it all seem accessible and straight-forward. And my perception is that never loses the audience.

She showed up at my report event where she raised some great questions in the Q & A afterwards, and then when one activist decided to read a Bolshevik statement of solidarity (as happens, I've learned, in certain activist circles), Melanie directly shot the woman down saying, "I have a problem with what you're doing and I don't understand why you think that this is an appropriate way to engage in this discussion." It made me grin.

Tonight, she was the speaker following a film screening that THAC hosted. (Bitter Cane, a 1983 film about Baby Doc's business-friendliness politicies) She started off by saying that she didn't have much to say, but then -- oh, man. She had me at hello! She had me at hello!

One of the topics that I try to raise in some of my talks about Haiti is how Haitians are so much more politically engaged than Canadians are. I have been in conversations with Haitians in which they're just perplexed that Canadians don't really care about what our government is doing. Melanie broached the same topic from the other direction. She said that we don't feel too great a need to be engaged with our government, mostly because we mostly have pretty comfortable lives. And then she went on to say that it's as if we willingly make that trade -- that we'll be apolitical in exchange for that comfort. And everyone in the room was right there with her. People felt it. One fellow immediately used that as a launching point for his comments/questions. And he talked about being immersed in this corporate media barrage that's so obviously fictitious that he just wants to shut it all out. The whole Q and A period remained a fascinating, engaging event.

I suppose this all reduces to "I get a rush out of listening to smart, engaging speakers." Which, duh. But there it is.

This article in The Star struck me as creepy:

Though international officials refrain from pointing fingers directly, doubts about Préval's leadership have deepened, and some look anxiously at Haiti's two-century history of instability in fear of sliding back to the future.

I've grown increasingly disillusioned with the Préval presidency -- it appears to me that he's completely capitulated to the neo-liberal agenda. I wouldn't want his job mind you; what do you do when you know that the last guy who had your job was sent into exile twice and almost assassinated a whole bunch of times?

Nonetheless, I can't say I feel good about the number of articles that seem to be supporting the idea that the running of Haiti needs to be taken out of the hands of the Haitians.

I was at a really, really great Haiti talk tonight. A Haiti event at which I didn't have to speak!!!!!

One of the speakers, Justin Podur, did an amazing job situating the current disaster in a political context. He makes a number of the same points in this YouTube video.

Today, I got into a conversation about Spivak and the subaltern. Why do I still have brain cells devoted to this? Why?

This article has me screaming at my screen.

I had an event the other night, where I was inchoately talking about Haiti and my recent delegation. During the Q and A, several people raised interesting points of conversation. I think my favourite point came from one woman who talked about the need to change the discourse on Haiti. The ongoing narrative of the poor, downtrodden Haitians who are the victims of economic, political and natural disasters is part of the problem. That point has probably been the foremost thing in my head for the last few days.

The first speaker we had at our event was a man named Ronald -- a Haitian guy who I'd never met before, but who I'd love to chat with more. He took the floor and made a point of saying that the Haitian Revolution is the dominant story of Haitian lives, and it doesn't matter how much difficulty or hardship the Haitian people endure, they will not live under the rule of any masters. Any.

Two days later, I went down to Crisis Camp Toronto, and listened to a U of T disaster specialist tell us that there were two disaster response groups in Haiti: the US and the UN, with various NGOs operating in concert with one of those two groups. When I took the podium after him, I made a point of suggesting that a third disaster response group had been overlooked.

Ah, IMF. You can always be counted on in times like this. First you're gearing up to give Haiti a $100 million loan (with the conditions that Haiti raises the price of electricity, keep inflation low, and not give any public employees raises), and then because of the earthquake you drop the conditions and decide it should be a grant, instead. And then, when people stop paying attention, you change your mind again.

I just saw a notice about an upcoming book: Haiti: The God of Tough Places, the Lord of Burnt Men, and I thought, hey, that's Father Rick (LJ).

I'll be interested to see the book.

The U.N. World Food Program sharply reduced its deliveries this week after failing to obtain enough U.N. peacekeepers or U.S. soldiers to keep anxious crowds in order. After staging as many as 20 deliveries in a day last weekend, the agency has cut that number to a maximum of five.

The limit was set by the U.N. peacekeeping command, which concluded that its weary and overstretched troops could handle no more than that, according to WFP spokesman David Orr. With an estimated 2 million people in serious need after the Jan. 12 earthquake, U.N. officials say they have been pressing U.S. military leaders to assign more soldiers to food missions.

— Washington Post

Apparently Préval, in responding to a question about whether he's concerned with the presence of all these foreign troops, replied that the question was ideological: "We are talking about people suffering and you are talking about ideology," he said.

I think the soldiers haven't done much, if any, good in this entire process.

Less than a penny of each dollar the U.S. is spending on earthquake relief in Haiti is going in the form of cash to the Haitian government, according to an Associated Press review of relief efforts.

Two weeks after President Obama announced an initial $100 million for Haiti earthquake relief, U.S. government spending on the disaster has nearly quadrupled to $379 million, the U.S. Agency for International Development announced Wednesday. That's about $1.25 each from everyone in the United States.

Each American dollar roughly breaks down like this: 42 cents for disaster assistance, 33 cents for U.S. military aid, nine cents for food, nine cents to transport the food, five cents for paying Haitian survivors for recovery efforts, just less than one cent to the Haitian government, and about half a cent to the Dominican Republic.

The U.S. government money is part of close to $2 billion in relief aid flowing into Haiti — almost all of it managed by organizations other than the Haitian government, which has been struggling to re-establish its authority since the quake. On Wednesday, a defensive President Rene Preval acknowledged his country's reputation, but said aid money isn't lining the pockets of government officials.

"There's a perception of corruption, but I would like to tell the Haitian people that the Haitian government has not seen one penny of all the money that has been raised — millions are being made on the right, millions on the left, it's all going to the NGOs (nongovernmental organizations)" Preval said, speaking in Creole at a news conference.

— Associated Press, emphasis added

I was working on some write-ups over the last coupl'a days and went hunting for some stats. In my searches, I came upon this Amnesty International paper, and from it I scraped this data about the prison that I visited:

Pre-trial detention refers to the period of time between arrest and judgment of an individual accused of committing a crime. Preventive and long-term pre-trial detention remains the rule in Haiti. Detainees are arbitrarily arrested and held for long periods without being able to challenge the legality of their detention. The Code of Criminal Investigation allows for release on bail pending trial, but this measure is seldom applied (Chapter VIII, Articles 95-108). Detainees remain in prison during the investigation of the crime they are alleged to have committed, and often exceeds the three-month time limit provided by law.

According to reports from national human rights organizations and the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti, prisons are over-crowded and less than 20% of the 8,833 prisoners held as of the end of October 2009 had been brought to trial.

Prison overcrowding is of great concern and could amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. According to a Haitian NGO, National Human Rights Defence Network (Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains, RNDDH), at the end of October 2009, there were 5.5 times more prisoners in the National Penitentiary in Port-au-Prince than its maximum capacity, in blatant violation of international norms regarding the minimum conditions for the detention and treatment of prisoners (4,317 prisoners were occupying a prison built for 800 prisoners).

Although I'm generally pretty suspicious of RNDDH (formerly known as NCHR-Haiti -- the same organization that printed lies that got Ronald Dauphin arrested), these numbers seem consistent with the numbers I heard in Haiti.

More than anything else, what has happened in Haiti since 1990 should be understood as the progressive clarification of this basic dichotomy – democracy or the army. Unadulterated democracy might one day allow the interests of the numerical majority to prevail, and thereby challenge the privileges of the elite. In 2000, such a challenge became a genuine possibility: the overwhelming victory of Fanmi Lavalas, at all levels of government, raised the prospect of genuine political change in a context in which there was no obvious extra-political mechanism ― no army ― to prevent it.

In order to avoid this outcome, the main strategy of Haiti's little ruling class has been to redefine political questions in terms of 'stability' and 'security', and in particular the security of property and investments. Mere numbers may well win an election or sustain a popular movement but as everyone knows, only an army is equipped to deal with insecurity. The well-armed 'friend of Haiti' that is the United States knows this better than anyone else.

— Peter Hallward, "Securing Disaster in Haiti"

I want to be Peter Hallward when I grow up.

One of my colleagues in THAC quizzed a doctor friend who was planning to head down to Haiti. What, precisely, are the important medical supplies? She got this list:

Antibiotics
i.v. Rocephin, Ancef
oral amoxil, keflex cipro and chloroquine

Topicals
steroids, antifungals, flamazine

Blood Pressure meds
lasix, atenolol,aldactone

Other
tylenol, ibuprofen,prednisone, maxeran, ulcer meds

Ear/Nose/Throat
gentamicin, cipro drops

Non Meds
gauze sterile and non sterile gloves,telfa,urinary catheters,iv cannulas, suture material

I've seen this blog entry about adopting Haitian children making the rounds. I think it's a good read.

Reed Lindsey (who has been living in Haiti for a few years now) reports on story fatigue. All the good bits of the Haitian earthquake have already been reported, and it's time to move on.

This radio interview with Laura Flynn talks about one of the elements that's largely been absent from coverage of the earthquake: the stories of Haitians helping Haitians. She says, of her colleagues in Haiti:

Their stories are of people helping each other, really, at dramatic risk to their own lives, of people coming together creating organizations right on the ground trying to figure out how to shelter, how to take care of each other physically and mentally.

This interview with Naomi Klein is also quite good, in the typical Naomi Klein way.

Edit: One more. This story is amazing. Man rescued after being trapped under a building for 11 days.

In fact, Haiti holds, or ought to, a pre-eminent place, historically and culturally, in its part of the world, much the way Newfoundland should, compared to the rest of Canada. Haiti's victorious slave revolt, from 1791 to 1803, was one of three revolutions that ushered in the modern era. The others were in France and the United States. But both France and the U.S., ironically, made Haiti pay a heavy price in reparations that burdened it for a century. The U.S. occupied the country from 1915 to 1934. From 1957 to 1986, it propped up the brutal Duvalier regime.

I suppose some would say this amounts to blaming your problems on ancient history. But they often don't mind doing that with individual history (I was abused/deprived as a child etc.) and, in "real" history, a century or two isn't so ancient. The U.S. is still struggling with the problems of its own slave past and the venomous race relations that lingered long after the Civil War.

The legacies persist. After Haitians made Jean-Bertrand Aristide their first elected president in 1991, a U.S.-backed coup overthrew him. When the Americans brought him back in 1994, they demanded suffocating economic policies. Then, in 2004, they basically abducted him from his country and his post.

Besides, there's a good reason not to be patronizing toward "failed states." The dirty secret is that all states are failed in some respects; there are, at most, differences in degree. Take even the U.S., as Noam Chomsky has. It didn't just fail the test of Hurricane Katrina. It alone among developed nations still can't work out a basic health-care system for its people. We have our own failed relations with native peoples. Lucien Bouchard gave up on being premier of Quebec because he found it an ungovernable society.

— Rick Salutin, "We all fail the failed state test", The Globe and Mail

Wow. More than I expected of the Globe.

This language of "failed states" has dominated just about every major government paper about Haiti since 2004.

Transgriot reproduces an interesting speech by Frederick Douglass about Haiti:

Haiti is a rich country. She has many things which we need and we have many things which she needs. Intercourse between us is easy. Measuring distance by time and improved steam navigation, Haiti will one day be only three days from New York and thirty-six hours from Florida; in fact our next door neighbor. On this account, as well as others equally important, friendly and helpful relations should subsist between the two countries. Though we have a thousand years of civilization behind us, and Haiti only a century behind her; though we are large and Haiti is small; though we are strong and Haiti is weak; though we are a continent and Haiti is bounded on all sides by the sea, there may come a time when even in the weakness of Haiti there may be strength to the United States.

[...]

But a deeper reason for coolness between the countries is this: Haiti is black, and we have not yet forgiven Haiti for being black or forgiven the Almighty for making her black. In this enlightened act of repentance and forgiveness, our boasted civilization is far behind all other nations. In every other country on the globe a citizen of Haiti is sure of civil treatment. In every other nation his manhood is recognized and respected. Wherever any man can go, he can go. He is not repulsed, excluded or insulted because of his color. All places of amusement and instruction are open to him. Vastly different is the case with him when he ventures within the border of the United States. Besides, after Haiti had shaken off the fetters of bondage, and long after her freedom and independence had been recognized by all other civilized nations, we continued to refuse to acknowledge the fact and treated her as outside the sisterhood of nations.

No people would be likely soon to forget such treatment and fail to resent it in one form or another. Not to do so would justly invite contempt.

22 years after this speech, the U.S. invaded Haiti.