Haiti: Occasional Musings – 14, “the wasps have been knocked out of the nest”*

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Tweet UPDATE President Aristide today held a press conference in which he announced that Lavalas’s participation in the next elections – mobilization begins! Two years after his March 2011 return to Haiti, former President and Fanmi Lavalas leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide made his first appearance in public. President Aristide had been called to court by the [...]

Haiti: Occasional Musings – 13,

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A second article in the Guardian [2009] by Paul Collier [Clinton's economic policy bag man] is even worse as he advocates Haiti seize the ‘window of opportunity’ by mirroring Bangladesh’s garment industry. Haiti should be running as far away as possible from the Bangladesh model which has resulted in the deaths of over 1000 garment workers over the past few years including the so far 640 people killed when a building collapsed last week – imagine the uproar if 640 US workers had died as a result of negligence. The whole point of factories in Bangladesh and Haiti is to robotize people and bleed the workers to death. That is the cost of cheap food, cheap clothes, and expensive iPhones, workers are bled. In Caracol, farmers sold their land for $1200 and this is one of the problems in the new ‘open for business’ Haiti. Poor farmers and displaced people are being offered meagre sums of money to sell land or to move from camps. Its hard to resist and consider the long terms when you have nothing. I attended a May day protest by some of the women workers who make t-shirts for yes, you guessed it, Walmart.

Occasional Musings – 12, tap taps, okada and guns

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Tweet I’m visiting Florida for a couple of weeks, and if I am to be honest, I needed a break to get my bearings and to refresh my energy.  PAP is sapping of energy:  heat, noise, people, market – here its difficult to know who occupies the greater number, buyers or sellers.   Every few [...]

Haiti: Occasional Musings – 12 , Solidarity House Update

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Tweet It’s been a hectic three weeks with lots of visitors, an earthquake scare that shook Petion-Ville, and a trip to a mountain village to meet potential barefoot solar warriors who will return on Tuesday.  There have been various illnesses including me loosing my voice and after two months my back went into crisis on [...]

Haiti: In conversation with Flaurantin Marie Enise

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Tweet Jalouzi is a hillside neighborhood of about 200,000 people overlooking lower Petion-Ville.  It is accessible from two roads, one at the top and one below.  The view from the top is stunning. From here you can see  Port-au-Prince looking east to the sea and north to the mountains.  The only way to travel is [...]

Haiti: Occasional Musings, 11 – International Women’s Day

Tweet I have a general wariness around national and international days which are set aside to remind us of a particular issue or celebration such as the Day of the Child, Human Rights Day, Water Day, Day Against Homophobia and International Women’s Day [IWD]. There seems to be something condescending about such designations not least [...]

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