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.

Acts of God and Retribution in Haiti

U.S. funds finally headed to Haiti, 10 months after earthquake Photo: The Associated Press

The American media is playing fast and loose with the facts. They are painting a misleading picture of the situation in Haiti. CBS New's 60 Minutes did a piece this past Sunday which is representative of the propaganda; as was a recent piece by a pool reporter named Steve Tuttle at Newsweek (more about that at Mediahacker).

The 60 Minutes piece was peppered with outright lies and was titled, "Haiti: Frustration and Anger."

The "anger and frustration" of the Haitian people, 1.5 million of whom are still living in filthy, unsanitary, unsafe camps, battered by the elements and forced to face more earthquake, hurricane and tropical storm hazards? The piece features contact with a Haitian family living on a highway medium in Carrefour. It highlights an American doctor, David Walton who has worked with Partners in Health for 13 years. 60 Minutes also interviews former President Bill Clinton. Mr. Clinton says he "loves the place" and he "doesn't want anybody to die because of the floods," describing the earthquake a "natural disaster that hit the country in a highly impacted dense urban area, now it's covered with rubble which has to be cleared as you do the rebuilding, housing always takes the longest."

The piece does not bother to tackle any tough questions. Here are a couple of questions for 60 Minutes:

• Why hasn't Haiti had cholera in almost 60 years?
  This is a surprising fact, in light of the fact that the Bush administration, for political reasons had the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) withhold loans targeted for water infrastructure improvements in the very area where the cholera outbreak started and is spreading from rapidly.
  
  A corollary to that question: Why did the IDB make the Aristide government pay interest on loans his government never received?
  
  *The political reason the U.S. withheld loans: To oust the democratically elected government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide.


• Why does the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) think the cholera is a strain imported from South Asia?


• Why does a Harvard cholera expert, John Mekalanos, think that is is important to know the origin of the cholera strain. Mekalanos says the virulent strain is imported from South Asia.

"John Mekalanos, a cholera expert and chairman of Harvard University's microbiology department, said it is important to know exactly where and how the disease emerged because it is a novel, virulent strain previously unknown in the Western Hemisphere - and public health officials need to know how it spreads."

Experts: Did UN troops infect Haiti?

• 60 Minutes, how did the trash you filmed in the city cause the cholera in the countryside?


• Why didn't 60 Minutes use Google to learn that Bill and Hillary Clinton actually spent their honeymoon in Mexico -- Acapulco, not Haiti. The Clintons had returned from their honeymoon, and visited Haiti a week later. Bill Clinton says so on page 235 of his memoir "My Life."


• Why didn't 60 Minutes ask Mr. Clinton why his wife is blocking aid money to Haiti? She said back in March that Haiti was no more corrupt than any other developing country. Secretary Clinton also stated that she "sent a lot of experts from government agencies here in the U.S." to "work closely" with the Preval government prior to the January quake.


• What's changed since to make the U.S. government put a hold on the aid it pledged in March? Don't they care that most of the victims of the January earthquake are living in intolerable misery?

"As if Haitians living in tents and under scraps of plastic don't have enough to grapple with as a tropical storm bears down and cholera spreads, the U.S. Congress has put up another obstacle to delivering the $1.15 billion in reconstruction money it promised back in March.

The State Department still has to prove the money won't be stolen or misused — not an easy task in a country notorious for corruption.

"Given the weak governmental institutions that existed in Haiti even before the earthquake, Congress wants to be sure we have that accountability in place before these funds are obligated," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told The Associated Press."

New Obstacles Stalls Aid Funds for Haiti

The cholera epidemic, UN military occupation and U.S. controlled Haitian government are crippling Haiti's ability to recover from consecutive disasters.
There's a reason why the Haitian government must tread lightly in declaring the cholera epidemic an imported disease (Dr. Alex Larsen, Head of the Haitian Ministry of Health announced that the disease is imported, but did not name the UN's Nepalese base specifically as the source of the contamination).

The Haitian government is submissive to the UN occupiers. MINUSTAH has their boots on the figurative neck of the Haitian population, much the same as the Haitian military did. The internationals believe and authorities in Haiti have vocalized that the tanks and guns of the UN make them the owners of Haiti.

Ward at St. Nicholas Hospital Photo: Georgianne Nienaber

Sources close to the political situation in Haiti say that Preval was hand picked by the Bush administration – probably because they were assured of his compliance to their neoliberal measures. This has been proven true in Preval's actions since taking office as he presided over the privatization of most government owned services. Preval used his veto power to rebuff a modest raise of the minimum wage – which is USD $3.049 a day or about 38 cents an hour for an 8 hour day as of February 24, 2010.

The majority of the Haitian Parliament is made up of officials who were part of the U.S. installed puppet government of (U.S. citizen from Boca Raton, Florida) Gerard LaTortue. Wyclef Jean's uncle Raymond Joseph was one such Haitian official fronting for Bush in Haiti. Preval did not make any changes to the parliament's makeup when he assumed the Haitian presidency.

The Haitian diaspora and Haitians suffering in the camps are fed up with the Preval government and they want change. They blame the Haitian government's "incompetence" and "lack of compassion" for the desperate situation on the ground. However, Haitians should be aware, as outlined above, that the weak Haitian government in place now wasn't chosen to represent Haitians. It was chosen to represent the interests of the international community. A weak Haitian government suits the corporatist agenda just fine.

The Haitian government is just a pawn used to break the will of the Haitian people. The Haitian population has demonstrated for and died in great numbers since the first U.S. sponsored coup in 1991 to support of a real democracy in Haiti. Democracies in developing countries is anathema to the neoliberal agenda of the corporatist elite that run the G-20 major economies of the world.

The Obama administration's Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton is of two minds about the "corruption" in Haiti. Sometimes she thinks that it doesn't represent a substantial obstacle ("We see that all over the world. It is not, by any means, unique to Haiti. I have seen it in every setting and on every continent that I have visited."), other times her State Department is so concerned about the aid money being "stolen" and "misused" that they must put a hold on it.

Truth be told, the State Department is not very concerned about Haitians and their plight. What really matters is whether the U.S. will get the bang for the bucks that they and their allies, particularly France and Canada, have invested in the November 28 "selections" in Haiti. The U.S. alone has 10 million in the pot.

Finally, after over ten months of waiting for aid money, the government of Haiti, to its credit has sought aid from Europe. It's a long shot since Secretary Clinton has in no uncertain terms asked U.S. allies to withhold funds from Haiti.

"The Secretary of State told the U.N. conference in March that if the effort to rebuild was "slow or insufficient, if it is marked by conflict, lack of coordination or lack of transparency, then the challenges that have plagued Haiti for years could erupt with regional and global consequences."

Nearly all the countries present at that conference have been slow in delivering on their promises since."

Some US rebuilding money finally headed to Haiti

In a recent development, AP's Jonathan Katz reports that more than ten months after the quake, the U.S. State Department has finally released $120 million in aid for rubble removal, housing, education and Haitian government budget support.

Haitians are too quick to hand the U.S., France, Canada and their allies more ammunition to continue to keep Haiti subservient by joining in on the chorus that blames the Haitian government alone for the worsening catastrophe in Haiti.

It was the international community and their proxy, the UN which brought this cholera plague to Haiti. It was the U.S. which left Haiti vulnerable by pressuring the IDB to withhold loans that were targeted for improving the water infrastructure in Haiti. They worked with the morally bankrupt private sector run by Haiti's mafia families and renegade military to oust the democratically elected government of Aristide, twice! It was they, who forced neoliberal policies down Haiti's throat which has continuously kept Haiti in debt and dependency and lead to Haiti's inability to feed its people and the loss of over 300,000 jobs for subsistence farmers... forcing many of them to immigrate to the crowded capital of Port-au-Prince where they perished in the devastating earthquake.

Haiti is unofficially a "protectorate," of the U.S. and the "NGO nation" the U.S. has created since the orchestration of two coups that ousted Haiti's democratically elected government. The Haitian government has very little authority. Most social services are provided by the Non-governmental agencies (NGO), who grow more and more arrogant and dismissive of the Haitian government every day.

If Haiti's government was stronger (and had more support from Haitians), maybe they would be empowered to hold free and fair elections where every party is allowed to participate, including the majority party, Lavalas. This could be a way to keep Haiti from being made an official "protectorate" of the U.S. Of course, that is not the only way.

Haiti's government cannot continue to be weakened... supporting the government could be a way to force the UN to get out of Haiti at the end of their current "mandate." It was a certainty on October 15 this year that the U.S. run Security Council would renew the occupation.

We cannot continue to give the U.S. the excuse it seeks to make Haiti a protectorate.

If and when that (officially) happens, the U.S. (and their allies) will probably release all the aid funds they've been withholding. The bad guys would have won because they will have broken the will of a population which seeks to be free. Haitians want a real democracy. They do not want the current system where a tiny minority of greedy families own 80% of the country's wealth and resources, refusing to allow the population to have a chance to have a dream for equality, justice and a chance for advancement in a free society, where one man, one vote makes for a real democracy. It is corrupt, inhumane and evil U.S. foreign policy which is keeping that dream deferred for all Haitians.

The plan for Haiti (as often vocalized by ex-president Bill Clinton, head of the IHRC and his wife Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) is to continue on the path of making Haiti into a heaven for corporations who will supply low-wage sweatshop menial jobs that offer no chance for workers to build a future, and to make Haiti an island "vacation paradise."

What about Haitians? Where is their paradise? This is their country. Haitians want more for their children. They want more for their country.

The Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission (IHRC) is unconstitutional. The Haitian parliament should not have subverted the will of the Haitian people by approving its formation. The makeup of the Commission is illegal, because foreigners cannot govern in Haiti.

In the final analysis, the real sin of Haiti was that they were the first ever successful slave rebellion. They established the first free country in this hemisphere. Haitians conquered the white supremacists and are this hemisphere's first black republic.

Will Haitians ever stop paying for being the victors over the white supremacists?

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The Red Cross Is A Party to G E N O C I DE in Haiti

The Red Cross has been delivering slop water to the camps. The water is not potable. The people have gotten sick as a result, with stomach aches, rashes, fever and other water bourn diseases. Is the Red Cross even telling folks that they need to boil the water? Even if they want to, most don't have the facility to do so. So why not give them clean water? What is the Red Cross spending the donation money to Haiti on?

THE RED CROSS is lying on it's website when they purport to be delivering purified water or crisis counseling.

EXCERPT FROM THE RED CROSS WEBSITE:

"….The American Red Cross has been working for months in the camps of Port-au-Prince educating tens of thousands of people about health and good hygiene. In response to the cholera outbreak our health promotion teams have more than doubled in size, to about 230 promoters, and we expect to directly reach about half a million people with cholera prevention messages within a month. These face-to-face messages about cholera have been reinforced by millions of text messages sent to about 380,000 cell phone users by the Red Cross network, as well as radio broadcasts.

The Red Cross network has also been distributing 660,000 gallons of purified water across Port-au-Prince every day for months.

_____________________________




Unfortunately, as this video demonstrates, this is not what is really happening on the ground.

EXCERPT FROM A REPORT BY SEBASTIEN WALKER:

Water is delivered here but everyone says it is not sufficient. This water distribution is organized by the Red Cross and the truck comes around the camp about for times a day distributing water to the residents, but it's not water that they can drink. They say when they do drink it, it makes them ill. But they simply do not have access to anything else.

"This water is not potable at all, it gives us infections."

If cholera takes hold here, access to drinking water will be the most important safeguard against the acute dehydration that has already killed so many.

But the Red Cross says it won't be from the supplies they deliver.

Ricardo Caivano
Country Director
"Our recommendation is to always boil the water if you can. Or to buy the drinking water if they can that is sold. "

Sebastien Walker
Al Jazeera
"That's not possible for a lot of people, Sir.

RC: "Almost impossible, yes."

SW: "Why is it not possible to supply drinking water?"

RC: "It's difficult. It's not impossible, it's difficult."

SW: "As fears rise over what could happen if cholera does take hold in Haiti's camps. So too should the questions of why more hasn't been done since January to make sure that an outbreak of disease doesn't turn into another catastrophe.

How To Treat Cholera / Traiter Les Patients

Click on images to view a larger image | Cliquez sur les images pour agrandir l'image.

Source: Biosurveillance - View the original file HERE.

Voir le fichier original ICI

How to prevent and treat cholera (pdf)