In Haiti, UN Cholera Means Widespread Death

The Nepalis are continuing to help the UN cover up their culpability in contaminating Haiti's agricultural breadbasket with cholera by trying to cast doubt on the fact that the UN Nepali soldiers in Mirebalais are the origin of the scourge. An article appearing on a Nepali online news website (ekantipur.com - July 22), reads: "Haiti cholera: Charge on Nepalis ‘circumstantial’ -- Expert says evidence not based on hard science," but the Lougarou is out of the bag. The latest report to affirm the UN imported cholera to Haiti is from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

The evidence that the UN is culpable for contaminating Haiti with cholera, also has solid support from the scientific report of Professor Renaud Piarroux of the Université de la Méditerranée of Marseille. The report was compiled from a three week mission to Haiti (November 7 to 27, 2010).

There is also video and photographic evidence that the contamination originated from the UN Nepali base. The video features eyewitness testimony.

THE SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE

Professor Piarroux' scientific report is the first linking the Nepali base to the cholera outbreak, but many other epidemiologists and public health experts have said that the soldiers are the most likely source of the contamination. His report, titled, "Mission report on the cholera epidemic in Haiti," concludes that:

"... the fact-finding mission conducted [the] last three weeks has revealed the severe and unusual nature of this epidemic, with the origin no doubt being imported. It started around the camp of MINUSTAH and was spread explosively due to massive contamination of the water in the Artibonite River and one of its tributaries with feces of patients with cholera.

--Professor Renaud Piarroux | Université de la Méditerranée

The Nepalis article sites "different tests" conducted by the UN on Nepali soldiers which were "negative" as a basis for a lack of evidence that the UN Nepali are guilty of contaminating Haiti.

TESTING, TESTING, 1, 2, 3...

1. We should trust the UN to conduct their own tests? What's the basis for this trust? It's certainly not been earned. Especially in light of the UN's continued denials and lies. The UN even claimed that the Nepali base's waste disposal system was up to EPA standards!
   
   
2. If the UN had nothing to do with the cholera outbreak, why didn't they allow an independent entity to test all the Nepali soldiers?
   
   
3. Just because a person doesn't show symptoms doesn't mean they are not carriers of a disease, does it? Again, we only have the UN's word that they conducted test on the soldiers.
   
   
4. Let's say there were "negative" test results. Is that evidence that there was no cholera outbreak at the Mirebalais base? Obviously, the answer is no, since the strain of cholera brought to Haiti is of South Asian origin.
   

We just don't have the details and cannot trust that there was a full UN investigation. We're left with many unanswered questions, with no credible answers and outright lies coming from the UN camp. Bottom line, independent epidemiologists and public health authorities in Haiti, the U.S. and France have all concluded that the UN Nepali military likely imported cholera to Haiti.

• The timing of the outbreak in October in Nepal fits in exactly with the arrival of the soldiers at their base in Mirebalais.
  
  
• The Nepali base (origin) is upriver from where the disease was first reported (site of contamination) downstream.
  
  
• There is no historical record of cholera in Haiti prior to this epidemic.
  
  
• The disease first infected Haiti's rural breadbasket - the Artibonite, away from the site of the devastating earthquake of January 2010 and the people living in the tent camps in the city of Port-au-Prince; a fact that the mainstream media conveniently failed to point out in the aftermath of the cholera outbreak - making it seem that the cause of the outbreak originated in the IDP camps.

The cholera contamination is expected to sicken over 779,000 people and to kill some 11,100, according to the British scientific journal, The Lancet. Though minimal prevention measures and the availability of clean water could save many lives, Haitians are being offered vaccines and sometimes rations of clean water (keeps the NGOs in business), but no sustainable preventive measures to stop widespread death, like sustainable sources of clean water.

LET'S GO TO THE VIDEO AND PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE

Thanks to Sebastian Coe of alJazeera, there's video evidence that the Nepali base's handling of their waste was negligent and criminal. Soldiers at the Nepali base were videotaped cleaning up the fecal matter that was seeping from the waste system after the outbreak. UN [al Jazeera] investigates cholera spread in Haiti

Even more unsettling, there is an iconic photograph from the AP of waste from the base being dumped just 400 meters away from the UN base in Mirebalais.

THE EXCUSES

The UN answered accusations that they imported cholera to Haiti by claiming that the Nepali camp's waste disposal method was not only up to international standards, but it was up to EPA standards. We know that was a lie. The UN said tracing where the disease originated was "not important." But, the scientists and public health experts say that tracing the source of a disease is a critical factor in diagnosis and managing a disease outbreak.

It's time for the UN to come clean about the origin of the cholera in Haiti. Haitians must demand more than an apology. The UN must pay reparations to the victims and their families. The UN must also provide clean sustainable water infrastructure to Haiti as a part of any reparations. For too long, Haiti's "friends" in the "international community" have intervened in Haiti's sovereign affairs, always to the detriment of Haiti's national interests and always leading to the deterioration of Haiti's infrastructure and continuing underdevelopment.

Water is life. Is it a coincidence that the UN (aka, "the international community"), a proxy force for the U.S. government is continuing to commit human rights violations in Haiti by spreading death?

More reading on the UN occupation of Haiti here.

The UN, NATO and Cannibals in Washington want the people of Somalia, Haiti and Libya to die quietly

UPDATED 07.30.2011

Each family is permitted up to three buckets of water a day. They must use

that small amount of water for cooking, bathing, washing and drinking

Photo credit: Alessandro Rampietti | Al Jazeera

There is a war on poor people of the "developing" world and a war on those who try to uphold their country's national interests and people's human rights above those of the imperialists at the UN, NATO and Washington. It is in their best "interests" that the people of developing countries die quietly.

They are determined to control the world's resource using whatever means necessary. Usually, the means they favor is military, but they have other means as you will read below.

They are committing genocide in Haiti, in Libya, in Somalia. Globally they are grabbing so-called "water rights" and destroying poor people's access to clean water.

"Water Privatization Conflicts." Read more at academic.evergreen.edu.

At the same time, the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, United Nations, and World Trade Organization have set financial assistance guidelines for third world and developing nations that requires privatization of municipal water delivery. Read more at "Water Wars... " - Thread Post blog.

“Water must be free for sustenance needs. Since nature gives water to us free of cost, buying and selling it for profit violates our inherent right to nature's gift and denies the poor of their human rights.”

-- Vandana Shiva, Indian environmental scientist

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Tragic cholera outbreak in Port de Paix killing scores of Haitians.

Flooding Scours the Whitewash From Haiti Aid Efforts

According to investigative and political writer Georgianne Niebner, aid agencies funded by U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have tricked donors into paying for the whitewashing of Haiti's cholera pandemic. Now with the rains, no amount of public relations, false reporting and outright lying can hide the rot and neglect they've tried to hide. Mother Nature and the dispassionate entity known as cholera are slowly exposing them and cholera is ravaging Haiti. Read Niebner's article at the LA Progressive.

Cholera is returning with the rains, after initially spreading throughout the water supply in Haiti after MINUSTAH imported the scourge to Haiti. The UN (MINUSTAH) Nepalese Camp in Mirebalais infected the Artibonite river system at the Meye river with cholera by dumping contaminated feces.

The sanitation at the Mirebalais MINUSTAH camp was not sufficient to prevent the fecal contamination of the Artibonite River. But the cynically named, United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) claimed that the UN Nepalese camp's sanitation system was not only up to international standards; it was up to EPA standards.

The Lancet, a weekly peer-reviewed general medial journal, which is one of the world's best known, oldest, and most respected general medical journals, expects that a mere 1% weekly reduction in consumption of contaminated water would avert 105,000 cases of cholera and 1500 deaths in Haiti. However, the measures being employed by the aid agencies are insufficient and The Lancet projected in April this year that there will be 779,000 cases of cholera in Haiti and 11,100 deaths between March 1 and November 30, 2011. Those are the conservative figures, the human tragedy could be much worst.

Water is life. Destroying a country's water supply is a crime against humanity
In 1998, the U.S. prevented the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) from going through with disbursing approved loans (targeted for building water infrastructure) to the Haitian government in order to destabilize the Aristide government. The IDB was following orders from Washington.

Washington's "humanitarians" and their "partners" (in crime) have no problem with abusing, starving, killing, maiming, (sending formaldehyde trailers to Haitian school children) or preventing aid boats from entering Gaza. Washington doesn't bat an eye over spending hundreds of millions to bomb the people of Libya. But will negotiate to screw over the sick and the old by threatening to cut their social security and healthcare. The poor, ill and vulnerable are used as political pawns. They are multinationals, they have no allegiance or loyalty to the U.S. except in so far as they can form a power bloc to screw over the rest of humanity. People's lives are a part of their political, cynical, inhumane war games, power struggles and greed.

Background on IDB/U.S. human rights violations in Haiti

"Letter to IDB President: On behalf of Haitian Supporters." Read the story at the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights.

"Report Indicts U.S. Government and Inter-American Development Bank." Read the story at Partners in Health.

Now the US and NATO are using the same inhumane, criminal tactics in Libya: violating the people's right to have access to clean, plentiful water, in a desert.

Nato Destroys Libya's $30 Billion Water Pipeline. Read the story at English Pravda.ru.

People will die as a result of this... this is terrorism and will lead to mass genocide. More people over a longer period of time will die than from their sick joke of a "humanitarian war" in Libya. Just as people are dying in Haiti due to the criminal actions of the UN, U.S. and IDB.

Famine and drought in the horn of Africa. Was it preventable?

Hell yeah! Somalia is in the cross-hairs of the war criminals in Washington. It is targeted for defying the imperialists' in their quest for a "New World Order." Remember how Clinton had to ignominiously pull out troops from Somalia? Just Google: "Clinton's defeat in Somalia." They are out for the blood of the Somali people.

Not surprising then that we learned last week that in Somalia, the CIA has secret prisons and is training killers as they have all over the world. See the Democracy Now story: "Jeremy Scahill Reveals CIA Facility, Prison in Somalia as U.S. Expands Covert Ops in Stricken Nation."

The famine and drought that is killing the weak and poor of Somalia was preventable. The drought was predicted last year. Why weren't preparations made by the "peacemakers", "humanitarians" and "the world's policeman" to save some lives?

The Somali Prime Minister accuses the UN of holding back aid food. Abdiweli Mohamed Ali says relief aid is not reaching those in need in famine-stricken Horn of Africa nation. Read the story at Aljazeera.

A similar situation occurred in Haiti, where the UN/US prevented the disbursement of food and aid in Haiti by militarizing the "rescue" effort after the earthquake.

In fact, the democratic president of the United States might as well have invited the extremis right-wingers at the Heritage Foundation for advice on how to respond to the quake crisis in Haiti. This week, the American people seem to have finally caught on the fake populist in the White House as his poll numbers have plummeted during the debt ceiling circus. Hey Republicans and Democrats, those of us who read know the cat and mouse game you are playing with our lives is pure theater. The Republicans have already assured Wall Street that they will be raising the debt ceiling. Whatever they say, the Republicans are going to raise the debt ceiling.

We see you for the political cannibals you are Washington.

_________________________________

UPDATE 07.30.2011

US-backed forces launch military offensive in Somalia as aid is used as a weapon of war
by Susan Garth, 30 July 2011 | wsws.org

"[...] A drought which has put 12 million people at risk across East Africa has become the pretext for the US to step up military aggression through its proxy forces. The same humanitarian justification was given for the US military intervention in Somalia begun by President George Bush in 1992 under the codename Operation Restore Hope and continued by President Bill Clinton. US forces claimed to be protecting aid convoys, but terrorised the civilian population as they hunted down supposed terrorists. Since then, Somalia has become a focus for Obama's war on terror.

It seems that the US-backed forces have taken the opportunity offered by the drought and famine to extend the control of the TFG. Heavy shelling was reported in the capital Mogadishu on Thursday, July 28.

Analysts believe that the drought has weakened al-Shabab. Abdiwahab Sheikh Abdi Samed, a Somali political analyst with Southlink Consultants in Nairobi maintains that a rift has opened up between clan elders in the famine-struck areas and al-Shabab militants. It seems that the the US and its allies in the region are determined to use the drought to strike a blow against al-Shabab.

“The day's of al-Shabab are numbered,” Samed said, speaking on the US propaganda station Voice of America.

The military offensive is only one part of their strategy. Aid is itself being used as a weapon of war. Samed went on, “My biggest worry is only one thing. If the international community is allowed to provide food and water and basic necessities to the al-Shabab controlled areas, they will receive a logistical support so that they are now prolonging the fighting.”

[...]"