Two Months After Haiti Quake: Obama Refuses To Relocate The Vulnerable; Invites Mass Death

As of March 12, the two-month anniversary of the Haiti earthquake, the refusal of President Obama to conduct large-scale relocation to safe ground, for the 1.3 million people in the greater Port-au-Prince quake zone — now facing the coming rainy season's floods and disease — constitutes a death sentence for hundreds of thousands. Obama must be impeached or resign.

While President Obama went through the motions of meeting in Washington earlier this week with Haiti President Rene Preval, the Administration continued pulling out even the now-limited U.S. military capabilities from Haiti, needed for relief and rebuilding logistics. Troops are leaving almost daily. On Thursday, more than 470 soldiers from the 2nd Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Divison, departed Port-au-Prince.

Gen. Douglas M. Fraser, Commander of SOUTHCOM, deployed by the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID), would not say this week, exactly what his force numbers are now in Haiti. But the level is down to barely 9,000 (6,000 on land and 3,000 sea-based) from the 20,000 U.S. servicemen sent in soon after Jan. 12. For example, on Saturday, the hospital ship USNS Comfort will arrive at Norfolk, Virginia, en route back to its home port in Baltimore. Its mission in Haiti has been terminated.

What is required, instead, is a full-scale mobilization to save lives, and support the restoration of a nation. Most urgent, is a mass relocation program — led by an expanded U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — to offer secure lodging and productive CCC-type nation-building projects, at some 50 transition camps of 20,000 people per camp, in several of Haiti's departments (states) outside the stricken southern quake zone. The 1.3 million people huddled in the zone now are in imminent danger of flooding, landslides, waterborne and mosquito-vectored diseases of all kinds. Malaria is on the increase.

In addition, there are over 600,000 people who fled the quake zone, and are stranded in unlivable situations throughout the country. For example, 160,000 at the Dominican Republic border; and another 162,000 in Artibonite Department, north of Port-au-Prince.

It is a race against the clock before the rains. Already flash floods occurred on the south coast at Les Cayes on March 1; and mudslides have hit in the north.

- Pretenses of Charity -

Instead of a policy of re-location and infrastructure building, the stricken are being left to die in place. Haitian Prime Minister Bellrive and government officials have asked to set up five settlements outside Port-au-Prince, to provide transitional lodging for at least some quake victims to leave the danger zone, but there is no mobilization. Early on, the Obama Administration turned down a request for full-scale evacuation.

Obama is channeling all U.S. aid — $700 million — through the AID, which in turn, is funding commercial and non-governmental organizations to carry out work in Haiti, in line with the objectives of the international nexus of Bill Gates, George Soros, London-serving agencies committed to depopulation. The quake-zone people are not to be moved.

Overall, these agencies have supplied emergency shelter (tarpaulins, plastic sheeting, etc.) to about 525,000 people, or 41% of those in the quake zone in situ, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) this week. But even if all 100% got emergency "shelter" tomorrow, they still face suffering and death by remaining in the quake zone, at high-risk for illness and floods.

One current example of this deliberately deadly policy, features the private outfit, CHF International, which partners with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as well as dozens of other companies, such as Chevron. And Obama's new AID Administrator, Rajiv Shah, who worked for the Gates Foundation for 8 years.

Shah held a press briefing today at AID to announce his new "Helping Shelter Haiti" project and exhibit at the Reagan Building in Washington, D.C. The new "Helping Shelter Haiti" is a public/private partnership of AID with CHF International, to construct individual, small sheds, at 3.5 sq meters per person, consisting of a wooden structure covered by plastic sheeting. The sheds are promoted as easy to to put up, and OK in storms. On the NPR news coverage on the CHF initiative Feb. 28, commentator Greg Allen (Weekend Edition Sunday) said that the aid agencies turned down Haiti's request to move people to new, safe settlements. The policy instead, is to build the huts in place in the flood zone.