MEDICAL EQUIPMENT/SUPPLIES NOT GETTING MEDICAL TEAMS IN HAITI

The right testicle of hell: History of a Haitian holocaust
Blackwater before drinking water
By Greg Palast

1. Bless the president for having rescue teams in the air almost immediately. That was President Olafur Grimsson of Iceland. On Wednesday, the AP reported that the president of the United States promised, “The initial contingent of 2,000 Marines could be deployed to the quake-ravaged country within the next few days.” “In a few days,” Mr. Obama?

2. There’s no such thing as a “natural” disaster. Two hundred thousand Haitians have been slaughtered by slum housing and IMF “austerity” plans.

3. A friend of mine called. Do I know a journalist who could get medicine to her father? And she added, trying to hold her voice together, “My sister, she’s under the rubble. Is anyone going who can help, anyone?” Should I tell her, “Obama will have Marines there in‘a few days’”?

4. China deployed rescuers with sniffer dogs within 48 hours. China, Mr. President. China: 8,000 miles distant. Miami: 700 miles close. U.S. bases in Puerto Rico: right there.


5. Obama’s Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, “I don’t know how this government could have responded faster or more comprehensively than it has.” We know Gates doesn’t know.


6. From my own work in the field, I know that FEMA has access to ready-to-go potable water, generators, mobile medical equipment and more for hurricane relief on the Gulf Coast. It’s all still there. Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who served as the task force commander for emergency response after Hurricane Katrina, told the Christian Science Monitor, “I thought we had learned that from Katrina: Take food and water and start evacuating people.” Maybe we learned but, apparently, Gates and the Defense Department missed school that day.


7. Send in the Marines. That’s America’s response. That’s what we’re good at. The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson finally showed up after three days. With what? It was dramatically deployed – without any emergency relief supplies. It has sidewinder missiles and 19 helicopters.

8. But don’t worry, the International Search and Rescue Team, fully equipped and self-sufficient for up to seven days in the field, deployed immediately with 10 metric tons of tools and equipment, three tons of water, tents, advanced communication equipment and water purifying capability. They’re from Iceland.



9. Gates wouldn’t send in food and water because, he said, there was no “structure … to provide security.” For Gates, appointed by Bush and allowed to hang around by Obama, it’s security first. That was his lesson from Hurricane Katrina. Blackwater before drinking water.

10. Previous U.S. presidents have acted far more swiftly in getting troops on the ground on that island. Haiti is the right half of the island of Hispaniola. It’s treated like the right testicle of Hell. The Dominican Republic the left. In 1965, when Dominicans demanded the return of Juan Bosch, their elected president, deposed by a junta, Lyndon Johnson reacted to this crisis rapidly, landing 45,000 U.S. Marines on the beaches to prevent the return of the elected president.



11. How did Haiti end up so economically weakened, with infrastructure, from hospitals to water systems, busted or non-existent – there are two fire stations in the entire nation – and infrastructure so frail that the nation was simply waiting for “nature” to finish it off?


Don’t blame Mother Nature for all this death and destruction. That dishonor goes to Papa Doc and Baby Doc, the Duvalier dictatorship, which looted the nation for 28 years. Papa and his Baby put an estimated 80 percent of world aid into their own pockets – with the complicity of the U.S. government happy to have the Duvaliers and their militia, Tonton Macoutes, as allies in the Cold War. (The war was easily won: the Duvaliers’ death squads murdered as many as 60,000 opponents of the regime.)


12. What Papa and Baby didn’t run off with, the IMF finished off through its “austerity” plans. An austerity plan is orchestrated by economists with an irrational belief that cutting government services will somehow help a nation prosper.

13. In 1991, five years after the murderous Baby fled, Haitians elected a priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who resisted the IMF’s austerity diktats. Within months, the military, to the applause of Papa George H.W. Bush, deposed him. History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. The farce was George W. Bush. In 2004, after the priest Aristide was re-elected president, he was kidnapped [by U.S. Marines – ed.] and removed again, to the applause of Baby Bush.



14. Haiti was once a wealthy nation, the wealthiest in the hemisphere, worth more, wrote Voltaire in the 18th century, than that rocky, cold colony known as New England. Haiti’s wealth was in black gold: enslaved Africans. But then they rebelled – and have been paying for it ever since.


From 1825 to 1947, France forced Haiti to pay an annual fee to reimburse the profits lost by French slaveholders caused by their slaves’ successful uprising. Rather than enslave individual Haitians, France thought it more efficient to simply enslave the entire nation.


15. Secretary Gates tells us, “There are just some certain facts of life that affect how quickly you can do some of these things.” The Navy’s hospital boat will be there in, oh, a week or so. Heckuva job, Brownie!


16. Note just received from my friend. Her sister was found, dead; and her other sister had to bury her. Her father needs his anti-seizure medicines. That’s a fact of life too, Mr. President.




 It is six planes of medical relief supplies/equipment from MSF that have been diverted at this point. They have dialysis equipment which is essential for those who have rhabodmylysis which they have not been able to get in to save lives. This is a common effect from trauma. Rhabdomyolysis occurs when muscle breaks down. Myoglobin, a component of protein ends up in the kidneys. Myoglobin breaks down into components which can block and do damaged to the kidneys. This causes renal failure. Causes are anything which causes damage to muscle tissue such as trauma, dehydration, overexertion, heatstroke, and lying on one part of the body so long the tissue dies. Prevention is either drinking lots of fluids or administering them IV if the patient can‘t drink, dialysis may be required for some patients. I saw many cases of Rhabo in New Mexico from Mexicans who came over the border and walked through the desert. There are people who every day take water and put it in the desert for them, simply for humanitarian reasons.  Distributing water to the city immediately did not happen and has only happened on a limited basis so far. That assures there are many deaths.


 

The "right to dream". Psychological truama can take away hope and cause health problems. It is important for many of  these people to get treatment early to prevent PTSD symptoms from causing disability. It is doubtful much psychiatric care will happen as most people can't even get antibiotics at this point. The lack of antibiotics which could have been dropped in by helicopter or driven in by trucks is the reason for the mass amputations. The amputated limbs are gangrenous and being removed to prevent the patients from dying from sepsis. Many of the amputations have been done with just regular saws because they could not get their medical equipment. Those who have had the surgeries will still be at high risk of infection.


Pinchinat: Report by Keziah Jean from Ciné Institute on Vimeo.

The rain could be a problem because of disease from the dead, mosquitos, and the human waste which must be everywhere by now.





A Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) cargo plane carrying 12 tons of medical equipment, including drugs, surgical supplies and two dialysis machines, was turned away three times from Port-au-Prince airport since Sunday night despite repeated assurances of its ability to land there. This 12-ton cargo was part of the contents of an earlier plane carrying a total of 40 tons of supplies that was blocked from landing on Sunday morning. Since January 14, MSF has had five(now six) planes diverted from the original destination of Port-au-Prince to the Dominican Republic. These planes carried a total of 85 tons of medical and relief supplies.

The U.N. had to negotiate with the U.S. to get relief planes made the priority over military, yet it is still a problem.

RTVE in Spain, translated from Spanish:

U.S. soldiers have decided expelling journalists from the airport in Port-au-Prince where we had installed dozens of reports without any explanation whatsoever.


Last evening the soldiers told us that in three hours we had to leave the camp of the Spanish Agency of International Cooperation and Development (AECI). The deadline was later extended until eight o'clock Thursday morning, two in the afternoon in Spain.


The AECI said that it is a "priority" to settle this matter, as indicated by her spokeswoman Virginia Castrejana agency Efe.


No one knows the reason, but again there will be no witnesses to the occurrence at the airport. The management of the facility by the U.S. military has raised controversy after the French NGO Doctors Without Borders condemns land that prevented several of its aircraft.

After Gate’s statement that it would be impossible to drop in food and water the Air Force did just that yesterday, a week into the disaster.  They have not decided if they will do any more drops, it was just a test run. I guess Gates did not know the military has done this before, once or twice. Umhmmm.