Montreal: Screening of “Haiti: Where Did the Money Go” and “Baseball In the Time of Cholera”

by Canada Haiti Action Network

Cinema Politica Concordia is hosting the screening of two outstanding films, “Haiti: Where Did the Money Go” and “Baseball In the Time of Cholera” on Mon., Jan. 21, 2013 at 7:00 pm in Room H-110, 1455 de Maisonneuve W., Montreal, Canada. The showings will be followed by a panel discussion. The panelists are to be announced.

            In the United States alone, half of all households gave a total of $1.4 billion to charities after the January 2010 earthquake, yet almost two years later more than half a million people still lived in squalid camps. Only a few had access to drinking water. Sanitation was woefully inadequate. Malnutrition and cholera were on the rise. What happened?

Accord to Break Electoral Council Stand-Off between Martelly and Parliament Appears “Stillborn”

by Isabelle L. Papillon (Haiti Liberte)

Poor governance, disregard of Haiti’s laws, a tendency to ride roughshod over other institutions and branches of government, and a lack of a spirit of compromise from the right-wing regime headed by President Joseph Michel Martelly and Prime Minister Laurent Salvador Lamothe, with the support of the U.S., France, and Canada, have plunged Haiti for months into a political crisis.

How a World Bank “success” undermines Haitian democracy

by Haiti Grassroots Watch (Haiti Liberte)

A $61 million, eight-year World Bank community development project implemented across half of Haiti has successfully repaired roads, built schools, and distributed livestock. However, the Project for Participatory Community Development (PRODEP) – Projet de développement communautaire participatif  –  has also undermined an already weak state, damaged Haiti’s “social tissue,” carried out what could be called “social and political reengineering,” and raised questions of waste and corruption.

UN Gives Journalism Prize to Investigation Exposing UN Responsibility for Cholera – And Still Won’t Accept Responsibility

by Dan Beeton and Jake Johnson (CEPR)

Tonight, in a ceremony presided over by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, BBC correspondent Mark Doyle and producer Piers Scholfield will be presented with an award from the U.N. Correspondents Association (UNCA). The award, one of many to be handed out, is described by the UNCA as being for “the best coverage of the United Nations and its agencies.” Certainly by “best” they do not mean the most flattering. The BBC radio documentary that earned Scholfield and Doyle the prize was an investigation into the source of the cholera outbreak in Haiti, which over the past two years has killed over 7,800 and sickened over 625,000. A host of scientific evidence, as well as on the ground reporting, including by Doyle and Scholfield, has pinpointed a U.N. military base as the source of the outbreak.

UN Responds to Cholera Crisis in Haiti with Repackaged Aid

by Roger Annis (Haiti Liberte)

In a short ceremony in New York on Dec. 11, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon announced what appeared to be an important nod to international grassroots pressure to fund a universal treatment and prevention program for cholera in Haiti. He said that  $215 million from bilateral and multilateral donors and $23.5 million from the UN’s own coffers were being pledged to a plan by the governments of Haiti and the Dominican Republic to limit the spread of cholera and eventually eliminate the disease from the island that the two countries share.

More Pressure Necessary to Get Desperately Needed Clean Water to Haiti

by Mark Weisbrot (for Al Jazeera English)

More than two years and nearly 7,800 deaths after U.N. troops brought the dread disease of cholera to Haiti, a plan has finally been put forward to do something to get rid of it.  While we are still a long way from implementation, there are important lessons to be learned from this experience.

The Kidnapping of Maryse Cinéus

Her Family Says They Now Live in Fear

by Kim Ives (Haiti Liberte)

Four men, including a policeman, kidnapped Maryse Cinéus, 36, from her home in Croix des Bouquets on May 12, 2012, according to her family. The business woman is presumed to be dead.

Uprising in Jérémie

by Isabelle L Papillon (Haiti Liberte)

Violent protests shook the southwestern city of Jérémie for four consecutive days from Nov. 27  to Nov. 30. The town’s angry population blocked the vehicles of the Brazilian construction company Construtora OAS, which was contracted under the administration of René Préval (2006-2010) to build 70 kilometers of road linking Jérémie with the southern city of Aux Cayes. The US$95 million road project, for the leg from Jérémie to Camp Perrin, was financed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Canadian government.

SOA Watch: We’re Still there Until the School of Americas Is Closed

by Wadner Pierre (originally published by The Maroon)

For the first time in two years, a group of Loyola students traveled to a US military- sponsored school in 

Fort Benning, Ga. to protest the 1989 massacre of six Jesuit priests and their two workers.

It has been 23 years since six Jesuit priests and their two workers were murdered at the Creighton University