A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
If everything the United States does appears to be related to its imperial mission, that's because it's true. The “U.S. policy of putting the military in charge of, not only disaster relief, but foreign assistance in general, is an outgrowth of the collapse of the Soviet Union.” The attitude is, “If they want American aid, they'll have to accept the U.S. military presence.”
US Humanitarian Aid Looks More Like US Invasion
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
“U.S. governments regard masses of Black people, first, as potential threats to security, and only second as fellow human beings deserving of assistance.”
It is understandable that many African Americans are making comparisons between the militarized character of the U.S. intervention in Haiti’s earthquake disaster and the federal government’s largely military response to the Katrina catastrophe in New Orleans, four and a half years ago. It is quite reasonable to conclude that the U.S. government is more concerned about law and order issues than in attending to the immediate needs of desperate disaster victims – especially when the victims are Black. History tells us that U.S. governments regard masses of Black people, first, as potential threats to security, and only second as fellow human beings deserving of assistance. Nevertheless, the heavy-handed militarization of U.S. disaster aid to Haiti should be seen in a larger context. As a matter of established American policy, the military has been assigned prime responsibility for U.S. foreign disaster relief, worldwide.
It’s not just Haiti and New Orleans, or Black people in. When the biggest tidal wave in recorded history killed nearly 230,000 people in 14 countries in 2004 – a death toll that some fear may be reached in Haiti – the face of U.S. disaster aid was overwhelmingly military, so much so that the government of Indonesia, the epicenter of the undersea earthquake, was initially hesitant to allow the Americans in. The Pakistani government’s response was much the same the next year, when 80,000 people died in an earthquake. The American “aid” mission to Pakistan looked more like an invasion – which was not an irrational fear, as subsequent events have shown.
“More often than not, the uniformed military is the dispenser of a wide range of U.S. foreign aid in Africa.”
It’s not just disaster relief that has been militarized. The U.S. military command in Africa, AFRICOM, has assumed responsibility for much of the day-to-day duties once performed by the State Department and other civilian agencies. More often than not, the uniformed military is the dispenser of a wide range of U.S. foreign aid in Africa, as part of a general militarization of U.S. relations with the rest of the planet.
This U.S. policy of putting the military in charge of, not only disaster relief, but foreign assistance in general, is an outgrowth of the collapse of the Soviet Union, nearly two decades ago. As the world's only superpower, the Americans began comparing themselves to ancient Rome. If weaker nations recoil at the prospect of American legions stomping around their country, well, that's too bad. If they want American aid, they'll have to accept the U.S. military presence.
The military's dominance in U.S. relations with other nations is also evident in the size of the embassies the U.S. is building around the world. The largest is in Iraq, and is designed more like a junior Pentagon than a civilian facility. The sheer size of the embassy the Americans are building in Pakistan is a huge source of public outrage and fear. And the fifth largest U.S. embassy in the world sits in Haiti, one of the planet's most economically unimportant nations. What purpose could it possibly serve, other than as a U.S. military and and dirty tricks base for the U.S. Southern Command – which now decides what gets in and out of Haiti. For all practical purposes, the U.S. Southern Command is the occupying power in Haiti. What we are observing is imperialism in action, under cover of disaster.
For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
Comments
At a time when other rescue
At a time when other rescue teams are still plucking live bodies out of the rubble, this AFP articles says that US military officials leading the relief effort say they are shifting the focus from tracking down survivors buried in the rubble towards recovering bodies and starting to rebuild the devastated nation.
HTTP://WWW.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h8rAWRPBhWlneXh0RBj_F...
The only way the US will step up rescue efforts is if white American's with lost children in Haiti start to complain about the military not doing enough, and that's starting to happen. Anybody see Bill O'dickhead the other night? The usual racist white double talk. He's attacking Hugo Chavez and France for attacking the U.S. military for not acting fast enough in bringing in digging equipment. But then he turns around and attacks the Pentagon for not going to this hotel on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, where he believes that 19 blonde haired, blue eyed, white girls are buried. SMH...
Relatives of Americans missing in Haiti angry
HTTP://WWW.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/21/AR201001...
I was watching CSPAN the
I was watching CSPAN the other day, and i heard Obama's racist and incompetent Homeland Security chief assuring all of the homeless Haitians that she would let them drown in the water, throw them in jail, and deport them back to a failed state if they try to migrate to the U.S. for a better life. This was right after the disaster happened.
I assumed that a competent democratic Homeland Security chief would realize that this was neither the time or place to threaten Haitians, and she couldn't persuade people to not migrate from a failed US puppet state anyway. The statements were just pure callousness on her part - meant for white public consumption here in the US, because she gave the message in english to French speaking people who aren't listening to radio's or televisions. The Obama administration already has Air Force cargo planes flying over the devastated country, blasting a recorded message from the sell-out Haitian ambassador to Washington:
“Listen, don’t rush on boats to leave the country,” Mr. Joseph says in Creole, according to a transcript released by the Pentagon. “If you do that, we’ll all have even worse problems. Because, I’ll be honest with you: If you think you will reach the U.S. and all the doors will be wide open to you, that’s not at all the case. And they will intercept you right on the water and send you back home where you came from.”
HTTP://WWW.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/us/19refugee.html
Oh yeah! That's hope and change for ya Haitian massive...
Homeland Security and Defense are saying that they're taking a hard line against Haitian refugees, yet they allowed the mass exodus of Cubans and Mexican's into this country. "The Man" is currently pushing to get them amnesty, while they just started granting Haitians TPS after treating them like fugitives and criminals since the last Haitian disaster.
Like the late great historian John Henrik Clarke said: "Like a lawyer, you use history to set precedent."
And if I do that.... It ain't lookin to good for Black people in Haiti...
First of all, if we're in the United States of America, going on 4 years since Katrina, and people are still hurting there. What does that say for the prospects of recovery for nine million Black people in Haiti? Remember, those cameras are soon gonna shift away from Haiti once another war starts in the Middle East.
I predict (going by historic precedent)that none of that developmental money will go to setting up good governance, a social safety net, and workers rights. All of that money will go to the Haitian ruling elite, and a corrupt, cowardly, sell-out Préval regime that's subservient to Wall street and IMF interest - seeking to develop Haiti as a base for a profitable US-run garment industry founded on slave wages. No real democracy will flourish. Aristide and the Fanmi Lavalas party will still be barred from politics. Foreign troops will continue to occupy the country until the Preval government, and the Haitian ruling elite show a capacity to crack down on their own Haitian population on their own.
self delusion on the part of Glen Ford..
" it is understandable that many African Americans are making comparisons between the militarized character of the U.S. intervention in Haiti’s earthquake disaster and the federal government’s largely military response to the Katrina catastrophe in New Orleans, four and a half years ago"
I don't know how many times I need to remind Mr Ford and other BAR editors that their perception of how majority of Black people think do not jive with the reality of it.In order for Black people to see the evils of American politics,Black people would need to see through the tricks and lies of the man who presently is at the head of the U S government.At the present moment,there is nothing that the US government does that the majority of African Americans will find fault with..As a matter of fact,I dare BAR to take a survey of Haitian Americans and ask them how they view the actions of Americans in Haiti with the relief effort.I would be shocked if the majority's views towards America was not favorable..It is not just under an Obama administration that this will happen; It is under any Democrat administration.......It just gets worse under Obama.
Self-absorbed majority
More sweatshops then ever will there now be in Haiti, as desires are now dancing in the heads of consumers, visions of getting best buys at Wal-Mart on clothes marked “MADE IN HAITI.”
And the most popular cruse ships on earth will be those that stop at the plush resorts that will soon occupy all the ocean shore property in Haiti.
Say, did you hear the announcement just made by the puppet president of Haiti, the one put in power by our CIA coup dictatorship of 2004? All of the survivor-victims will now be moved 30 miles inland from Port-au-Prince. So if you have a million or two to invest, then consider that the finest port in Haiti will soon be surrounded by vacant ocean shore property, surely wide open for development.
ummmm i've been finding some really weird stuff on the net....
A Haiti Disaster Relief Scenario Was Envisaged by the US Military One Day Before the Earthquake
HTTP://WWW.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17122
Hugo Chavez Mouthpiece Says U.S. Hit Haiti With 'Earthquake Weapon'
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,583588,00.html
Chavez says US 'weapon' caused Haiti quake
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=116688§ionid=351020704
CIA Contractor Now Flying Spy Drone Over Haiti (Updated One More Time)
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/01/cia-contractor-now-flying-spy-dr...
UNDERSTANDING CHAVEZ
Cynical Negro:
What American propaganda about Chavez does is give him more and more material to work with when he´s addressing a big crowd. He has an extremely Venezolano sense of humor, and he really knows how to "sell" a joke. Especially to Americans and Brits. To understand Chavez, imagine a really smart auto-didact in about every issue as president of the USA and that guy has a really needling style. George Carlin or Lenny Bruce come to mind. He called Obama at one point an "ass-wipe" ("a lavarse el palto"..nb:I´m far from a professional translator, but that one was easy).
Ask yourself this question "did I fall for it when Chavez said he was going to BAN GOLF BECAUSE IT´S A BOURGEOIS SPORT?"???
I´ve heard that Chavez is an excellent golfer, actually.
But so much of the hassles are rooted in America´s corporate media not having any reporters who speak Andino Spanish. It´s a dialect that´s a little different from proper Castellano, Northen Mexican Spanish, and Puerto Rican SPANGLISH, and each Andean nation has it´s own way of speaking it.
EXAMPLE; the word "vaina" is the most common common noun and most used word...it means basically what "my shit or my bag " means in English, but broader in use. It´s almost exclusively Panameño although Colombianos understand and use it occasionally. No other country uses that word. Nobody in Panama or Colombia says "lavarse el palto" for Asswipe. That is strictly Venezolano.
Chavez has such an advanced sense of humor, he´s a genius at figuring out Gringos´fears, needs, that he can come up with all kinds of Andino ball-busters.
But I take the point of whoever wrote he much prefers hanging out with black people, etc. I find it hard to write English and I much prefer being around Latinos than around Americans. And I really dislike most Mexican-Americans in America because they, too, actively peel away their Mexican-ness as time and generations pass. My family made long treks from Russia to get to the Americas and picked up many languages along the way as opposed to Mexican-Americans who are fearful of the authorities and of white culture and desperately want to fit in.
I´m lucky that when I went to school in the U.S.A. it was a 1970s mood so really only idiots mocked foreign accents and I lived in a Puerto Rican neighborhood which had its own issues. They speak this weird papamiento of Spanglish. All I know is I have a NYC accent in English and a Paitillano accent in Spanish and I know Andino, obviously, so Chavez´s jokes make me laugh not anxious.
Neo Con Court Scribe says Chavez is done
.. I would appreciate your insights on what I consider drivel from a Neo Con court scribe, the article is entitled: "How Hugo Chavez's Revolution Crumbled," typical Washington/Anglo Centric trash piece on Chavez. The Neocons and suck asses have to be trembling at the prospect that Venezuela is possibly sitting on huge oil fields. If you read a few readers's comments you'll see that Amerikkans are such huge ass holes, closet racists and cultural idiots, with all political stripes awash in their American Exceptionalism bullshit and "anybody who doesn't kiss our ass is a threat" meme.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/24/AR201001...
It wouldn't surprise me a bit if Obama becomes the first "Black" president to attempt a coup in a brown-skinned country, i.e. Venezuela.
Last, I read somewhere, perhaps Black Listed News or Global Research CA, that the quote attributable to Chavez was not spoken by him but someone "in the administration" or from a t.v. network. From the article is sounded like a CIA psych-op operation involving a statement by a Venezuelan T.V. station that was attributed to Chavez. Last but not least, how in the hell do Amerikkans have the audacity to continually call Chavez a "Dictator?" Especially thanks to the SCOTUS last week, Amerikka is nothing more than a dictatorship, a plutocracy. with stolen elections, vote rigging, voter suppression, and one-party rule. The hubris of Amerikkans is sickening.
I would appreciate your insights on the Jackson Diehl propaganda piece. Also, do you still have your web site/blog? Please cut and paste if so.
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Estimado Enlightened Cynic:
Jackson Diehl has written a piece on South America in which every word is either a falsehood or offensive in the extreme. He´s wrong, misinformed, and an asshole. His remarks about Chile are tantamount to praising Jim Crow or Hitler. He gets in all the sneaky code words that seem bland and patriotic to America but are horribly offensive to urban South America, especially to the Jewish and Arab communities. I´ve tried to explain to pretty bright Americans EXACTLY HOW Obama´s USA Plan Colombia is the 3rd war and that they have two targeted groups: labor organizers and the PAN-SEMITIC (Jews and Arabs as brother) community which prevails everywhere but the Hasidic areas of Buenos Aires and Santiago.
It is clear to me that Jackson Diehl is kissing Obama´s ass because of the piece that ran in which Obama admits the USA is trying to conquer Venezuela economically.
FALSEHOODS: EVERY WORD DIEHL HAS WRITTEN
TRUTH: VENEZUELA IS A WEALTHY NATION WHICH NOW HAS WEALTHY NATION PROBLEMS: rural v urban conflicts, elites v everyone else, etc. AmeriKKKans cannot accept that Bolivarismo in combining peace, anarco-sindicalismo, anti-Imperialism, classically conservative capitalism (Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Noam Chomsky /Ed Herman, Ron Paul) with real voluntary non-coercive Socialism. But even in this set-up, Chavez and his team of Rodriguez, Sanan, and Saul have only collectivized a publicly mass owned natural resource and automotive sector. Chavez has put the bds in now for Banseco, Mercantil, etc. He needs to make sure large institutions, elite-owned banks are on board with every other UNASURE-ALBA countries when the macro economic tlargets are ageed to.
The devaluation of the VEB accomplishes a number of things Jackson Diehl doesn´t have a clue about. The deval was a show of strength not weakness, it set the precedent for abandoning the US dollar, and igiven AmeriKKK´s penchant for war, it makes the market for jet fuel and home heating oil much more accessible to the USA who are now so addicted to jet fuel because of war that eventually UNASUR-ALBA will be able to screw up NAFTA at will.
Chavez and team have played this petroleum game perfectly. They´ve diversified into a huge portfolio of alternative fuel research, made JVs with a number of auto companies led by FORD MOTOR COMPANY, S.A. (VENEZUELA). Believe me nobody at BAR or on Cindy Sheehan´s page the degree of LOATHNG that Ford CEO Allan Mulally has for Barack Obama!
I wouldn´t be surprised if Chavez and team were well aware of the Eduardo Schwartz/Michael Brennan theory of embedded optionalities in the management of natural resource management. Eduardo Schwartz was an escapee of Pinochet.
Also, the hidden truth about both Venezuela and the economies of the top 80 countries by GDPis that they all understand that free-market utopianism as well as the “dictatorship of the proletariat and the fantasy of the dictatorial government withering away” are both recipes for Nazism. Of the top 70 self-governing nations (excluding the USA which is an empire), all are both market-based for efficiency and socialist for fairness and ; I hope in the future, some redress in the form of reparations on the Swiss/Jewish or post-USSR models. My point coming back to Diehl is that he is clueless about any of this but knows all the Cold War, neo-liberal neo-conservative buzz words.
Self-governing nations like Venezuela, Denmark and Belgium have larger proportions of collective-ownership of productive capacity at about 35%. Ireland and Germany are at the other end with 7% collective ownership. Every self-governing nation knows that markets are best at efficient allocation of resources and voluntary socialism is the best way to guarantee fairness as much as possible.
I have no idea what the OBAMALISED USA would even be positioned on that scale because it is not a normal republic, direct democracy, parliament, or constitutional monarchy. It has no discernable economic philosophy other .than IIMPERIALISM, THEFT, COERCION, TORTURE AND MASSIVE LEVERAGE FRAUD, all contributing to the very opposite conclusion that Jackson Diehl imagines.
I´m sorry if the USA is so addicted to war and long-distance travel that it has made Venezuela a wealthy nation with a median net income higher than in the USA at PPP and with lower taxes.
You can win many a bar bet armed with the CIA WORLD FACTBOOK 2009, offering the opinion that Hugo Chavez is more “classically conservative” than Ronald Reagan was or George W. Bush were. Chavez and the main ministers are inflation obsessives. Tihey´ll jack up the overnight repo rate by 5-10% on inflationary results month by month, quarter by quarter. Now, I was tricky here because “classical or enlightened conservatives” are categories that Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman are quite comfortable with!
But the libertarian/socialist hybrid is here to stay unless Obama gets the planet blown in two! I assume you knew that already. Jackson Diehl jajajaja!!!! He truly is an uniformed clown.
How he gets to the devaluation of the Bolivar as a sign of WEAKNESS just means he knows nothing about economics. Again, Chavez is doing all these contrarian things TO BE READY TO HELP LEAD --NOT DOMINATE --THE SUCRE ZONE. A Venzuela which has given itself the unpleasant medicine now will be crucial in USASUR with the “free-markets” Piñera in charge of Chile, the other very wealthy nation. Be aware, when Piñera says “free markets” he doesn’t mean it in the way of a sensible if utopian nice guy like Ron Paul. He means ULTRA COERCIVE OBAMALISM, probably having re-privat ized CODELCO.
In sum, why Jackson Diehl is writing on international economics is a mystery to me because my 10-year old son, let alone my 15-year old stepson could barbecue Diehl n a debate.
I was fired from my old blog collective for being “too radical”, “too stubborn about Obama”. “Too naïve about Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, and Cynthia McKINNEY.”
Now, I do most of my blogging at Buelahman´s RedState Revolt. Buelahman has given himself a hard job. He calls himself “a proud redneck”. And he tries to convince other rednecks of how they are being exploited themselves and how voluntary socialism is not so bad. I pitch in for example for stuff like HR 676 CONYERS/KUCINICH. I live with the National Health and it´s great. So, I help there with the reality of it – I get HOUSECALLS from my physician! The government is forbidden from accessing my records and so on….B´Man says he´s worried because of being latino jewish, some of his readers´default position is discounted completely but he likes my take on things and I write in the OPPRESSOR´S LANGUAGE – ENGLISH.
I write a lot of notes on FACEBOOK and am pretty close friends with Cindy Sheehan, so I cover Latin and economic issues for her. I participate as co-host with Dr Torrance Stephens on the RAW DAWG BUFFALO RADIO SHOW on Thursday nights at 11pm Eastern on BlogTalkRadio.