January 15, 2010 Haiti Earthquake, #5 Please continue to read and widely re-distribute these Haiti Earthquake reports. “This is a disaster of historic proportions”. – U.S. Government official Janet Napolitano More than 50,000 people killed, the number possibly closer to 100,000 “50 percent of buildings in the worst-hit areas damaged or destroyed.” – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Many of the capital’s 3 million people without access to food, water, shelter and electricity Dump trucks are carrying loads of unidentified bodies and dumping them in unmarked mass graves BELOW: “As relief efforts ramp up, mass grave found outside Haitian capital”, by Anderson Cooper and Ivan Watson, CNN. Go to: http://www.cnn.com/ for photos, documentary video coverage...
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Obama’s honeymoon with Latin America is definitively over. NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS. Candidate Obama was upfront about his positions on Latin America. He said pointblank that he would maintain the embargo on Cuba. He endorsed the March 2008 Colombian incursion into Ecuador. He made clear his intention to continue funding Plan Colombia—the now decade-old anti-drug and counterinsurgency program—and to expand support for Mexico’s war on drug traffickers through the Bushbrokered Merida Initiative. In short, Obama offered little more than the same old militarized status quo. But who could remember all that in April, when Obama made his hemispheric debut at the Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago? “I’m...
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January 14, 2010 Haiti Earthquake, #4 While the 7.0 earthquake is the immediate cause of Haiti’s’ disaster, the main cause of death and despair are the historic conditions of poverty and vulnerability of a majority of haiti’s 9,000,000 people. Below, we send information from CNN television. The reports are devastating. The estimates of the numbers of Haitians killed range from 10s of thousands to 100,000, or more. No one has yet a clear idea. Most of the dead were already impoverished people; many will succumb to post-earthquake diseases, injuries and/or malnutrition. Click on CNN photo and video links to see the degree of destruction and desperation. It is hard viewing. You will see some...
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January 14, 2010 Haiti Earthquake, #3 Rights Action re-sends this statement from the INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE & DEMOCRACY IN HAITI (IJDH): RESPONDING TO HAITI’S DEVASTATION We support the IJDH and the articles and organizations that they recommend. Please contact the IJDH directly and consider donating funds directly to the groups they work with and endorse. * * * How to make tax-deductible donations via Rights Action: see below Please re-post and redistribute this information Join our listserv: http://www.rightsaction.org/lists/?p=subscribe&id=3 * * * January 13, 2010 INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE & DEMOCRACY IN HAITI (IJDH): RESPONDING TO HAITI’S DEVASTATION By Brian Concannon Jr., Director, IJDH GOOD NEWS FIRST We do actually have some good news: Mario Joseph...
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By Eli Clifton WASHINGTON, Jan 13, 2010 (IPS) – Suicides among United States military veterans ballooned by 26 percent from 2005 to 2007, according to new statistics released by the Veterans Affairs (VA) department. “Of the more than 30,000 suicides in this country each year, fully 20 percent of them are acts by veterans,” said VA Secretary Eric Shinseki at a VA-sponsored suicide prevention conference on Monday. “That means on average 18 veterans commit suicide each day. Five of those veterans are under our care at VA.” The spike in the suicide rate can most clearly be attributed to the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the high number of veterans returning...
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January 13, 2010 Haiti Earthquake, #2 “Life is already so fragile in Haiti, and to have this on such a massive scale, it’s unimaginable how the country will be able to recover from this.” – Edwidge Danticat “It is a tragedy that defies expression; a tragedy that compels all people to the highest levels of human compassion and solidarity.” – Militarily ousted, former President Aristide “APOCALYPTIC” 7.0 EARTHQUAKE DEVASTATES HAITI Thousands or 10s of thousands feared dead Uncountable numbers of injured and homeless One-third of Haitian population (of 9 million) affected BELOW Article: HAITI EARTHQUAKE DEATH & DAMAGE ‘STAGGERING’ Article: FORMER HAITIAN PRESIDENT SENDS CONDOLENCES How to make tax-deductible donation: see below For more...
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January 13, 2010 Haiti Earthquake Report-Appeal #1 7.0 EARTHQUAKE DEVASTATES HAITI EMERGENCY FUND-RAISING On January 12, 2010, an “apocalyptic” earthquake, 7.0 on the richter scale, devastated Haiti, the epi-center 10 miles south-west of the capital city, Port-au-Prince, a city of close to 3,000,000 people. With the highest levels of poverty and exploitation in the Americas, Haiti has long been one of the most devastated countries in the Americas, beset regularly by political and natural crisis and disasters. After the initial earthquake, 27 aftershocks followed, up to 5.0 on the richter scale. Major buildings have collapsed – hotels (the Christopher, the Montana), the National Palace, UN buildings, the Cathedral, etc; let alone the uncountable numbers...
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January 11, 2010 (On January 7, 2010, we sent to our listserv Part 1) In 2010, Rights Action continues our long-term work of funding and supporting community-based groups that have suffered injustices (repression, human rights violations, environmental injustice) and are struggling to end impunity in Guatemala. Injustice and impunity are not a crisis in Guatemala. This is not a tragedy. Rhetoric aside about democracy, sovereignty and the rule of law, 14 years after the “peace process” was concluded, Guatemala remains a profoundly undemocratic, unequal and unjust country in which the wealthy and powerful sectors act with close to complete impunity. On January 7, we sent around a Part 1, a series of articles about...
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January 7, 2010 In 2010, Rights Action continues our long-term work of funding and supporting community-based groups that have suffered injustices (repression, human rights violations, environmental injustice) and are struggling to end impunity in Guatemala. Injustice and impunity are not a crisis in Guatemala. This is not a tragedy. Rhetoric aside about democracy, sovereignty and the rule of law, 14 years after the “peace process” was concluded, Guatemala remains a profoundly undemocratic, unequal and unjust country in which the wealthy and powerful sectors act with close to complete impunity. BELOW Article: “Violence and failing justice, impunity in Guatemala”, by Colin Murphy, Le Monde diplomatique Interview: with Carlos Castresana, head of the UN International Commission...
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