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Today's Stories

August 9, 2010

Mark Schuller
Is Haiti Falling Through the Cracks? A Walk Inside the Camps

Stan Cox
Why People Get Hot Under the Collar About Air Conditioning

Greg Moses
The Story of a Deported Texas Student Awaits Obama in Dallas

Arno J. Mayer
Nuclear Carriers on the Move

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Spike Lee Fans at the Pentagon?

James Rothenberg
Hush Money Generation

August 6 - 8, 2010

Alexander Cockburn
Marriage's Fiercest Defenders

Patrick Cockburn
Welcome to Lebanon: Graveyard of the Arrogant

Bill Quigley,
Davida Finger and Lance Hill
Katrina Pain Index 2010

William Blum
Bombing Iran

Samuel Leff
The Green Berets as an Armed Peace Corps?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Paradoxical River: Down the Hanford Reach (Part Two)

Ralph Nader
The Spectulator's Rebate

Bill Hatch
Rodeo, Then and Now: Broncs, Boots and Boobs

David Yearsley
How BP Harnesses Music to Its Message

Saul Landau /
Nelson Valdes

Gross Media Negligence on Cuba

Sherwood Ross
Bernie Madoff and the Watchdog That Didn't Bite

John Ross
Starving for Justice

Conn Hallinan
The US and Yemen: a Lethal Blend

P. Sainath
India's "Paid News" Scandal: Blotted Out by Press Lords

Wayne Clark
Hyping Hawks and Circling Vultures

Jonathan Cook
The Destruction of a Negev Village

Margaret Kimberley
White Citizenship

Linh Dinh
House Slave Syndrome

Ramzy Baroud
Smoke on a Bridge

Ellen Brown
Escaping the Sovereign Debt Trap

David Rosen
Blood on the Floor: the Recession and Workplace Violence

Lawrence Davidson
Flattening the Bedouin Village of al-Arakib

Norman Solomon
Nuclear U: the University of California and the Nuclear Weapons Business

Gatien Elie,
Allan Popelard and Paul Vannier

France's New Rural Ghettos

Tom Genrich / Michele Parry
Back to the Land in France: Settler's By Choice

Dave Lindorff
A Whistleblower Bounty on Corporate Crime

Missy Beattie
Woe: the Politics of Exploitation

Rannie Amiri
Questions for an Ahmadinejad / Obama Debate

Charles R. Larson
Namibia's Brutal History

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Tigers ... or Copycats?

Laura Flanders
Recovery for the Rich

Andrew Ford Lyons
Playing Soccer in Gaza

Stuart Jeanne Bramhall
Wilhelm Reich and the Tea Party

Cpt. Paul Watson
The Rainbow Fades

Christopher Brauchli
Whacky Politics

Phil Rockstroh
A Götterdäm-merung of Kitsch

Barry Crimmins
Follow-Up Call

Benjamin Dangl
A History of Monstrous Mexico City

Finley Peter Dunne
Mr. Dooley on the Charity of the Very Rich

Poets' Basement
Three by DJ Moser

Website of the Weekend
"I Don't Like Liberals"

August 5, 2010

Mike Whitney
An Avoidable Depression

William Blum
Tell Me Again: What's the War About?

Daniel Kovalik
Venezuela and Labor: the Big Lie

Russell Mokhiber
America's Solitary Nightmare

Patrick Bond
South Africa Loses Its War on Poverty

David Macaray
The Police Need to Step Up

Ashley Smith
Haiti's Colonial Overlord

Susan Galleymore
Rationalizing the Bombing of Hiroshima

Website of the Day
Gavin's Sludge

August 4, 2010

Carl Ginsburg
Buffett, Gates, Rockefeller and the Conscience of the Very, Very Rich

Ron Jacobs
Afghanistan: a War Correspondent's Viewpoint

Mike Whitney
Looming Changes at the Fed

William P. O’Connor
Salt in the Wounds

Nick Dearden
Toxic Debts: Why Should Pakistan Trust Us?

Gareth Porter
Obama Junks 2008 "Troops Out" Pledge

Jeffery R. Webber
Uribe's Parting Shot

Doug Giebel
Flip-Flops and Failures

Deepak Adhikari
Postcard From Nepal

Adam Turl
A Progressive Alternative in Illinois

Wildlife Photoshoot of the Day
Palin's Momma Grizzlies

 

August 3, 2010

Bill Quigley
Why We Sued to Represent Anwar Aulaqi

Dean Baker
Double Dip Recessions

Mike Roselle
The Battle for Coal River Mountain

Don Duncan
Shooting Back: Young Palestinians With Cameras

Anthony DiMaggio
Operation Infinite Occupation

Martha Rosenberg
Why are US Troops Killing Themselves?

Clarence Lusane
Racism, Shirley Sherrod and the Obama White House

Franklin Lamb
America's Dog in Lebanese Fight

Conn Hallinan
Behind the Colombia / Venezuela Tensions

John Grant
Murder Inc. in Afghanistan

Website of the Day
FrankenSalmon

August 2, 2010

Darwin Bond-Graham
Women of the Storm (and the Men Who Love Them)

Maximillian C. Forte
The Wikileaks Afghan War Diary: Reasons for Celebration, Causes for Concern

Ralph Nader
Obama's Afghan Formula: Peace Through War

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Rabbi Preaches "Slaughter" of Gentile Babies

Ron Wilkins
The Other Side of Shirley Sherrod

David Macaray
Those Guatamalan Pay Scales

Linh Dinh
Rotting Fish: Congress, Goldman Sachs and the First Responders

Steven Higgs
The First Autistic Kid at School: the Story of Travis Roach

David Michael Green
A Bottomless Well of Greed

Gail Dines
The Stepford Sluts: the Return of "Mad Men"

Website of the Day
It's All Happening in Olympia!

July 30 - August 1, 2010

Alexander Cockburn
Do Disclosures of Atrocities Change Anything?

Paul Craig Roberts
Let Them Eat Cake

Gareth Porter
Bomb Iran? Neocon Nutballs Ramp Up Campaign

Patrick Cockburn
Getting Out of Afghanistan

Linn Washington
Racism in the Federal Government

Jeffrey St. Clair
Paradoxical River: Down the Hanford Reach

Anthony DiMaggio
Iran Under Siege

Chase Madar
Torturing the Rule of Law at Obama's Gitmo

Bill Kauffman
Wherein We Meet Genial Radicals by the Shores of Lake Champlain

Stewart J. Lawrence
Enjoining Arizona: Why the Battle Isn't Over

John Ross
Lovefest in the Zocalo

Joanne Mariner
Forced Returns From Guantanamo: Repatriated to Torture?

John Weisheit
Strip Mining Canyon Country

Saul Landau
The Alan Gross Case

Allan J. Lichtman
Comic Strip Politics

Margaret Kimberley
Shirley Sherrod's Righteous Anger

Russell Mokhiber
Don Blankenship Hates the Police

Rannie Amiri
The Existential Threat Facing Lebanon Today

Fred Gardner
Smoking Pot Does Not Cause Lung Cancer

Jeff Ballinger
The Day FIFA Lost Its Soul

Ramzy Baroud
Why Muslims Should Rethink Palestine

Steve Roest
Toxic Whales

Christopher Brauchli
The Return of Tancredo

Sheldon Richman
Trashing the Fourth Amendment

Missy Beattie
Devil's Food Cake

Don Monkerud
A Tea Party Fairy Tale

Mitu Sengupta
The Price of Being World Class

Mark Weisbrot
Colombia-Venezuela Dispute Will be Better Resolved in South America

Eric Walberg
Russia, Afghanistan and Star Wars

Willie L. Pelote
Cut From the Top

Charles R. Larson
The Last Woman on Earth

Kim Nicolini
Class Bonding and Man-Children in LA

David Yearsley
Christian Bach's Castrato Arias

Poets' Basement
Hays, Halle and Ford

July 29, 2010

Mike Whitney
Trillions for Wall Street

Jordan Flaherty Rogue State: a Movement Rises in Arizona

Dave Lindorff
National Insecurity Complex

Ron Jacobs
The Story of Evo Morales

Mark Weisbrot
Jobs, Stimulus and Debt

Conn Haliinan
The Great Myth of Counter-Insurgency

Sheldon Richman
Government Has Run Amok Since 9/11

Brian M. Downing
Rising Tensions in the Persian Gulf

Website of the Day
An Interview with Julian Assange

July 28, 2010

Paul Craig Roberts
US Treasury is Running on Fumes

Gregory Elich
The Sinking of the Cheonan and Its Political Uses

Bruce McEwen
The Great Marijuana Boom

Jonathan Cook
Shin Bet Exposed

David Macaray
Taft-Hartley Revisited

Jeanine Molloff
The Predatory Nature of Home Loan Modifications

Barry Crimmins Sickened Ire: a Visit to St. Moneychanger's Hospital

Linn Washington
Another Reverse Racism Scam

John Grant
Letter to an American Hero: PFC Bradley Manning

Anthony Papa
Is Cameron Douglas' Life in Danger?

Website of the Day
Animal Cruelty But One CAFO Crime

 

July 27, 2010

Gareth Porter
The Afghan War Springs a Leak

Mike Whitney
A Decade of Declining Housing Prices

Chris Floyd
The Poor Must Die

Karl Grossman
Floating Chernobyls

Dean Baker
Blacking Out on the Economy

Marjorie Cohn
McCain on Iraq: "We Already Won That One"

Patrick Cockburn
Worse Than Hiroshima?

Steve Breyman
Afghanistan: the Inside Story

Heather Gray
How Shirley Sherrod Saved a White-Owned Farm in South Georgia

Randall Amster
Climate of Fear on the Border

Manuel Garcia, Jr
Dear Democrats, 2012

Website of the Day
BP and Academic Freedom

July 26, 2010

Bill Quigley
Rampant Racism in the Criminal Justice System

Marjorie Cohn
The 30-Year Incarceration of Carlos Alberto Torres

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Police Impunity

Paul Craig Roberts
The Year America Dissolved

John H. Summers
Fly Away, Mockingbird!

Clancy Sigal
The Future is Female ... and Republican

Steve Niva
Olympia Food Co-op Boycotts Israeli Goods

Greg Moses
What Capitalism Means to the Tea Party

Dave Lindorff
BP's Don't Ask Don't Tell Policy

Harvey Wasserman
Why Stewart Brand is Wrong About Nukes

Jayne Lyn Stahl
The Skeleton in John Yoo's Closet

Website of the Day
Will There be Enough Water?

July 23 - 25, 2010

Alexander Cockburn
The Frame-Up

Mike Whitney
Shadow Banking Makes a Comeback

Rannie Amiri
The Hariri Assassination: Israel's Fingerprints Surface

Anthony DiMaggio
War on Terror or War of Terror?

John Ross
Killer Governor Falls

Sam Smith
How to End the Tea Party (and Scare Obama at the Same Time)

Clare Bayard
A Slow Motion Katrina

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Not Bad Policy, But Class Policy

Ellen Brown
Why "Sovereign Debt" is an Oxymoron

Saul Landau /
Nelson P. Valdes
The Media and Cuba's Prisoner Release

Ramzy Baroud
Empty Declarations

Nicola Nasser
Who's Funding the Settlements?

Carl Finamore
Labor and Money Clash in 15 Cities

John V. Whitbeck
If Kosovo, Why Not Palestine? The ICJ Opinion on Unilateral Declarations of Independence

Brian Cloughley
Psychotic Morons: "It's Fun to Shoot Some People"

Roberto Rodriguez
The Story of Leticia X: an Arizona Tragedy

Maytha Alhassen
The Liquor Store Wars

Igor Atamenenko
Spying in the Red Dawn of Wi-Fi

Tom Turnipseed
Covert Government

David Swanson
Dropping the Bomb

Missy Beattie
The Mother of All Gushers

Doug Giebel
Progressive Bribery

Christopher Brauchli
Criminalizing First-Graders

Laura Flanders
Who Has Shirley Sherrod's Back?

Stuart Jeanne Bramhall
Electoral Reform: the Issue Progressives Love to Hate

Cpt. Paul Watson
Bye, Bye Rotten Butter Bombs

Kevin Zeese
Standing With Private Bradley Manning

Dr. Susan Block
G-Thanks, Dr. Burri

Charles R. Larson
Borges: the Harsh Realities of Place

Charles M. Young Playing in the Church of the Rev. Gary Davis: an Interview with Ernie Hawkins

Poets' Basement
Three by Barbara LaMorticella

Website of the Weekend
The Killing Fields

July 22, 2010

Heather Gray
The Saga of Shirley Sherrod

Darwin Bond-Graham
Co-opting the Anti-Nuclear Movement

Gary Leupp
Obama's Afghan War in Perspective

Bruce E. Levine
How Psychologists Profit on Unending U.S. Wars

Greg Moses
Capital Strike?

Gerald E. Scorse
A Tax Cut Nobody Needs

Walden Bello
Greece and Wall Street

Paul Buccheit
The "Pursuit of Happiness" Means a Job

Website of the Day
Free and Equal

July 21, 2010

James Abourezk
Encounters With Sen. Robert C. Byrd

Mark Schuller
Opportunities in Haiti are Washing Away

David Underhill
BP Sticks Finger in Dike and All's Well ...

Jonathan Cook
Is the Israeli Right a More Credible Peacemaker?

Binoy Kampmark
The Secret Colossus

Dennis Bernstein
Cops Kill Again in Oakland

Jesse Jackson
The Big Disconnect

Brian J. Foley
Nice Work If You Can Get It

Tom Clifford
Political Pinups: Prague's Calendar Affair

Michael Donnelly
The Last of His Kind: Rock a While With David Vest

Website of the Day
The Scariest Unemployment Graph Yet

 

July 20, 2010

Uri Avnery
Inside the Israeli Knesset

Gareth Porter
Why the CIA is Trying to Burn Amiri

John Stanton
America's Defense Associations: Key Cogs in the War Machinery

Adam Turl
Incident at Willow Lake Mine: Peabody Coal and the Death of Thomas Brown

David Price
Disrespecting the Yellow in the Tour de France

Stewart J. Lawrence
Why Obama's "Secure Communities" Program May be More Dangerous Than Arizona

David Macaray
Made in China

Franklin Lamb
Palestinian Rights in Lebanon

Shamus Cooke
Labor Fights Back

Mark Weisbrot
Life Imitates Art

Website of the Day
Carbon Trading and Money Laundering


July 19, 2010

Russell Mokhiber Thousands Injured, 275 Dead, WR Grace Not Guilty

Dean Baker
The Path of Unemployment

Patrick Cockburn
Leaving Iraq: The Ruin They'll Leave Behind

Jonathan Cook
Netanyahu: I Deceived the US to Destroy Oslo Accords

Nicola Nasser
Selling False Hope: the US and the Palestinians

Ray McGovern
The Iranian Scientist Who Would Not Play Curveball

Dave Lindorff
Cracking the Sea Floor: Fools' Errand in the Gulf

Greg Moses
Racism Implodes Tea Party

Sheldon Richman
The Bibi & Obama Show

Mikita Brottman The Beauties and the Beasts: Hollywood, Blondes and the Slaughter Industry

Website of the Day
Study: Gulf Clean-Up Efforts Ineffective, Harming Not Helping Birds

July 16 - 18, 2010

Alexander Cockburn
The Fall of Obama

John Ross
In the Basement of Mexican Justice, No One is Innocent

Andrew Cockburn
Worth It? the Human Price of Sanctions

Gareth Porter
Was Amiri a Double Agent?

Andy Worthington
US Sought Rendition of British Nationals to Gitmo

Jonathan Cook
Israel Stops Listening to Its Judges

Ralph Nader
Delta Blues: Can the Iranian Model Save Mississippi?

Chase Madar
Keep Cops Out of Schools: New York's Failed Experiment

Saul Landau
Reality Gap in the Gulf

Ramzy Baroud
The Culture of Resistance

Iris Keltz
Off the Grid in the South Hebron Hills

Jordan Flaherty
Days of Cop Violence in New Orleans

Bill Quigley / Rachel Meeropol
The Case of the AETA Four

Dave Lindorff
Cap and Blow?

Christopher Brauchli
Homeless in Boulder

Missy Beattie
Marketing Peace and War

Michael Barker
Foundations and Social Change: an Interview with Diana Johnstone

David Swanson
Give Rove What He Wants

Stewart J. Lawrence
Is Obama Backing Away From a Sweeping Immigration Legalization Program?

Ed Emery
Camels in Crisis

Sherwood Ross
What Tea Partiers Owe Progressives

Yves Engler
The Political Roadblocks to Haiti's Reconstruction

N. H. Gordon
What the Presbyterian Statement Didn't Say About Israel

Tom Turnipseed
Killing for Fun

Cpt. Paul Watson
Saving Endangered Feces

David Krieger
Shatterer of Worlds

David Ker Thomson
Put This in Your Tailpipe and Smoke It

Dan Bacher
How Oil Lobbyists Are Writing California's Environmental Laws

Lisa Barr
Exit Security Theatre, Enter Cindy Sheehan

Charles R. Larson
The Translator and His Charge

David Yearsley
Why Bach Didn't Go Swimming

Kim Nicolini
In the Court of the Lizard King

Poets' Basement
Ahmad & Orloski

Website of the Weekend
Rachel Corrie Soccer Tournament

July 15, 2010

Paul Craig Roberts
Economics in Freefall

Mike Whitney
Why the Fed is Steering the Economy Into Deflation

Frida Berrigan
Trillion Dollar Babies: Re-examining the Pentagon's Spending Habits

Yifat Susskind
Children of War

Dave Lindorff
How Bank of America Got Away With a Huge Swindle

Paul Krassner
Tuli is Better Off Dead

David Macaray
Three Cheers for the Post Office

Sebastian Walker
In Haiti the Sense of Urgency Has Been Lost

Anthony Papa
A Mentor to Men Behind Walls

Website of the Day
Phone Fight: Christian Bale v. Mel Gibson

July 14, 2010

Janan Abdu
A Prisoner's Wife

Ellen Brown
How Brokers Became Bookies

Anthony DiMaggio
Afghanistan in Ruins

Greg Moses
The Snitches of Utah

Sherwood Ross
The Living Legacy of James Meredith

Tolu Olorunda
Play the Music: One Record Store Owner Refuses to Go Out of Business

Mark Weisbrot
Exacerbating the Crisis in the Eurozone

Laura Flanders
Do Ask, Don't Tell

Sam Smith
How Progressives and Liberals are Different

Phil Rockstroh
A Heap of Broken Images

Website of the Day
Evil Bible

July 13, 2010

Jonathan Cook
Remote-Controlled Killing

Greg Dropkin Blockade! Dockworkers, Worldwide, Respond to Israel's Flotilla Massacre and Gaza Siege

Dean Baker
Reckless Drilling: BP's Carnage

George Wuerthner
Financial Entanglements: Wolves, Oil, Bureaucrats and Judges

Deepak Tripathi
The Dwindling of Afghanistan's Coalition of the Willing

Firmin DeBrabander
The Escalating Chemical War on Weeds

Billy Wharton
Obama and ACORN: a Post-Mortem

Roberto Rodriguez
A Crack Law By Any Other Name

Brian J. Foley
From Russia With Lovers

Sasha Kramer
Haiti: Frozen in Time

Website of the Day
Gitmo: the Definitive Prisoner List

July 12, 2010

James Abourezk
The Unchallenged Power of the Israel Lobby

Harry Browne
World Cup Finale: "They Didn't Have to Deserve It ... They Were Just Playing"

George Ciccariello- Maher
Oakland's Verdict

Neve Gordon
Boycotting Israel: a Strategy, Not a Principle

Jonathan Cook
An Education Witchhunt

Linn Washington
Dispatch From Soweto

Dr. Susan Block
Bonobo Handshakes: Ape Sex, Chimp War, Human Ignorance and Some Hope

Jean Casella /
James Ridgeway

Supermax Takes a Hit

Dave Welsh
After 75 Years, Is It Time to Revive the WPA?

Bouthaina Shaaban
The Road to South America

Website of the Day
Chez Sludge: How the Sewage Industry Bedded Alice Waters

July 9 - 11, 2010

Alexander Cockburn
The Worst of Times, the Best of Times

Joanne Mariner
The Worst Supreme Court Decision of the Term

Mike Whitney
EU Banking System on the Brink

Rannie Amiri Business as Usual: Behind Turkey and Israel's Not-So-Secret Meeting

Ramzy Baroud
Cluster Bombs and Civilian Lives

Michael Hudson
Latvia's Third Option

Jeffrey St. Clair / Joshua Frank Beyond Gang Green

Joe Bageant
Waltzing at the Doomsday Ball

Jesse Strauss
Streets of Rage: Searching for Justice in Oakland

James Ridgeway
Congress and the Oil Spill: Hot Rhetoric, Hollow Reform

Charles Hirschkind
The Myth of Impasse

M. Shahid Alam
Israel: a Failing Colonial Project

Ralph Nader Summer Reading: 10 Books That Might Change America

Carl Finamore Runaway Recession: How Did It Happen, How Bad Will It Get?

David Ker Thomson
What Toronto Tells Us About Our Lust for Leaders

John Ross
Drug Cartels Win Mexico's Super Sunday Elections

Rev. William E. Alberts
The General and the Bomber

Julie Hilden
Elena Kagan and the 1st Amendment: Reasons for Concern

Jefferson Chase
Hard Facts About Israeli/Palestinian Peace Peace Possibilities

Dave Lindorff
Just Business

Christopher Brauchli
Blackwater's Nine Lives

Gregory Vickrey
For the Want of Three Votes: Why Did Anti-War Democrats Vote For War Funding?

David Macaray
The Beer Summit Revisited

Soha Al-Jurf
The Boundaries of Delusion

Missy Beattie
Something Quite Atrocious

Laura Flanders
Who Fights and Why: Winter Bone, War and the Economic Crisis

Clare Hanrahan
Confronting Rendition to Torture in North Carolina

Patrick Bond
FIFA Forbids Free Speech at World Cup Fan Fest

Billy Wharton
Another Detroit is Happening!

Shamus Cooke
Andy Stern Joins the Corporate Elite

Lee Sustar
Teachers' Unions at the Crossroads

Harvey Wasserman
Losing LeBron: Has Chief Wahoo Cursed Cleveland Again?

Farzana Versey
Kashmir's Inner Demons

Binoy Kampmark
Population Panic Down Under

Winslow Myers
Best Practices

Charles Larson
Parallel History

David Yearsley
World Cup Anthems

Poets' Basement
Three by Eric Chaet

Website of the Weekend
Gulf Spill News

 

July 8, 2010

Carl Ginsburg
Life in the Low to Mid-Teens

Paul Craig Roberts
Hillary Clinton's Latest Lies

Patrick Cockburn
The Chronic Failure of Israeli Leadership

Brian Cloughley
Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban

Sakura Saunders
Mining Through Roots

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Jump Starting the First Amendment

Eric Walberg
Wooing the West: US / Russian Relations

Chris Genovali /
Elizabeth Farries
Popping Grizzlies

Harry Browne
The Best Teams Got There and I Hope Catalunya Wins

Robert Bloom
A Presidential Tour Guide to Israel (Formerly Palestine)

Website of the Day
Mearsheimer: "No Accountability for Israel on Any Issue"

July 7, 2010

Anthony DiMaggio
Child Poverty: Forgotten Casualties of the Recession

Patrick Cockburn
No Woodshed for Netanyahu

Dean Baker
The Party of Unemployment

Gareth Porter / Ahmad Walid Fazly
"I Saw Them Taking the Bullets Out of the Body of My Daughter"

Nadia Hijab
Addressing the Settlements

Marjorie Cohn
Losing Afghanistan

William Blum
Some Thoughts on "Patriotism" Written on July 4th

Peter Gelderloos
Supporting the Prisoners of the G20 Police State

Carla Blank
When Kabuki is Not Kabuki

John Grant
Long Wars, Violence and Change in America

Website of the Day
Police State Canada

 

 

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August 9, 2010

A Walk Inside the Camps

Is Haiti Falling Through the Cracks?

By MARK SCHULLER

Midnight was the deadline for candidates for president of Haiti to submit their materials to the CEP, the provisional electoral council. The Miami Herald reported that 34 candidates have submitted papers, including Grammy-winning hip-hop artist Wyclef Jean, who announced his candidacy on CNN's Larry King Live and wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.

While there's no shortage of political candidates there is still a huge shortage of aid arriving to Haiti's most vulnerable, people living in makeshift camps. According to the latest database posted on the CCCM, the camp management coordinating cluster, there are more than 1.7 million people living in 1370 officially recognized camps. The website for the Haiti Reconstruction Fund - which only accounts for part of the pledges - shows just how little funds have actually materialized.

Mounds of concrete are also blocking Haiti's reconstruction, causing severe traffic jams and preventing people from being able to return to their home and rebuild. Despite the Sisyphian yellow-shirt teams toiling in the hot sun for $5 a day, the rubble can't be collected and removed because the government doesn't have nearly enough trucks, a symptom of the lack of funds. At this pace people will still be wheelbarrowing crumbled houses well into 2015, Haiti's next presidential election.

Another serious road block is the issue of sorting out land ownership. Even before the national registry fell under the rubble, land tenure has always been a complex and contentious issue in Haiti. Many areas of Port-au-Prince were settled either by tonton makout - Duvalier's death squads - given land for their service or by squatters. In many cases land ownership was never officially registered. Even if this logistical logjam were cleared, the vast majority of Port-au-Prince residents, up to 85%, did not own their homes before the earthquake. According to some UN sources, rents for "green houses" (those that passed inspection) have gone up 300% in several areas.

So despite the best efforts on the ground, things are far from perfect, with no end in sight. Despite the almost 400,000 families living in the camps, only 5,000 temporary shelters have been supplied to date. In Caradeux, one of the planned relocation sites, officially managed by an NGO, the situation is grim. Elvire Constant, one of the members of the central committee, pointed out what should be obvious: tents offer no protection against wind, rain, and tropical sun, to say the least about security issues. On my last visit, she recalled, "the wind is crazy. Last night the wind blew for more than three hours straight. I woke up, got up on my knees and held the tent up, left and right so that the tent wouldn't blow away with me. What's more serious is the afternoon sun." Elvire had to leave her tent because it was destroyed. She pointed to another, where we were standing right by the entrance to the camp, just recently shredded by that night's winds. The tent was on the ground not more than ten days.

If, like UN Special Representative Edmond Mulet who had paid a visit the previous day, one doesn't walk inside the camp, it appears to be well serviced. There are several buildings and shelters with various NGOs' and government agencies' names on them. At the entrance is a tent provided by UNICEF with "stop AIDS" written on it. "I'm a nurse," Elvire began. "But we don't have the means to serve the population. I spoke on TV and radio, telling the minister of public health that there are nurses available, and the population is vast [24,161, according to the latest information]. ... UNICEF knows the tent is here, but they have never come by, not even one day, to negotiate with us, to tell us whether it could be a mobile clinic or a health center." Inside the camp a ways, a tent from Save the Children whose purpose eluded everyone I asked was empty and ripped past the point of providing any shelter.

And this is in an officially managed camp, meaning that an NGO takes charge of making sure people's minimal needs are met. My student assistant who visited this camp gave it a score of "3," meaning that the conditions were all in all not that bad, on a scale from 1 to 10, with ten being the worst.

Unfortunately there are people living in much, much more dire situations.

My eight student assistants have been visiting over 100 camps, out of the 861 officially recognized in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area. The camps were selected at random, one in eight. I myself followed up on invitations from camp residents, visiting more than 20. While the data is still being entered, so I can't offer any statistics, far too many camps lack even the most basic services, seven months into the earthquake.

Given a persistent belief that people are only pretending to stay in the camps to get services, aid agencies are particularly loath to service small camps. Everyone's top goal - especially people having to keep all their belongings in a tent that can rip or be ripped, offering only the most minimal protection from the hot Caribbean sun and the tropical rain storms that have been battering the island - is to be moved into their old house, or a permanent house. That's why people choose to stay in a small, "spontaneous" shelter close by their old home, where their social ties, friends, families, churches, school, business, street commerce, etc. remain. One donor representative was quite blunt: "if we keep giving them services people will never move back into their homes."

So these very people in the small camps trying desperately to do just that are in a second tier of camps that don't offer any services. One committee leader, Carline Cherline, decried that the only time they got help was from a private citizen, who happened to have two tents to give. "After that, nothing at all. No one has come to offer aid." The other ten shelters crowding the lakou (yard) of a private home, people had to buy. As if predicting a concern from visiting officials, "they should come by at night and see how many people are sleeping here. During the day, people are out in the market, out at school, out trying to make a living."

For those - particularly policymakers who justify inaction by worrying about a handful of cases of people scamming the system - who do not have time or the means to spend the night in a camp, there are other ways to get this information: a blog containing firsthand accounts from inside the camps by Social Sciences student Carine Exantus and reporting from journalist / activist Etant Dupain.

Carine's neighbors connected a wire so they could have two plugs, one for a radio and another to charge people's cell phones. To go to the bathroom people have to ask a neighbor whose house is still standing. Carline explains, "it's embarrassing. And even though they are neighbors, it's starting to strain our relationship." They have to buy water and carry it back into the camp.

Unfortunately Carline's camp is far from unique. Reports from the field have detailed the lack of water and sanitation services.

For example, in Bobin, a camp where 2775 people live, in a ravine outside of Petion-Ville, there is only one latrine. Words don't do justice to the odor. Some residents prefer to use plastic bags. In addition, there is no access to treated drinking water. A single PVC pipe that had cracked offers some people a couple of buckets whenever the government turns on the tap for paying clients. Many people use the rainwater in the trash-filled ravine. Residents mentioned that NGOs had talked about installing a water system but up to now, almost seven months after the earthquake, it's still not here. According to Valerie Kaussen who investigated the situation, most of the problem lies in the fact that two NGOs, Solidarité and World Vision International, had begun "WASH" projects (water and sanitation), and so World Vision got out of the camp. Despite this, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) Camp Management Officer (CMO, the official representative and responsible party for the city) in Petion-Ville, referred Dr. Kaussen to World Vision as the Camp Management Agency. As a result, the latrines and water has not been installed.

On the other side of the metropolitan area, at least two hours away by public transit, on top of a small hill abutting the national highway in the neighborhood of Paloma in Carrefour, lies an informal settlement, with tarp compounds sitting next to the remains of houses. This "camp," recently discovered and catalogued by the IOM, is named after the committee: CAJIT, on Impasse Jean Thomas. Around 2500 people live in this camp.

The first words from Olga Ulysse, an international commercial importer or "Madam Sara" whose business was totally destroyed with her house, were gratitude that we even showed up. "People make appointments and they don't come. I don't know if it's too far or if people are afraid of the mountain." Before we ascended, her colleague Mme. Odrigue, an elected member of the local government council, asked if we too were afraid of the mountain. It was an embarrassing moment. No. Of course not. It was a six minute hike to the community center, a structure made of wood and two tarps, with random assortments of donated chairs rescued from the rubble of people's homes. A child was sleeping on a table, just having been given medicine. CAJIT operates a makeshift clinic for the most needy. "We have some trained first aid givers, even a nurse. But we have to buy our own medicines." In addition to the clinic, CAJIT organizes a twelve-person night watch, collecting funds to offer the six-men teams a hot plate of food before their watch. "All of this is without a penny," Olga lamented.

Once in a while CAJIT organizes a clean up - and indeed the walkways were clear of trash when we visited last Monday. But there is not a single latrine for the entire camp. Olga explained, "We have to use plastic bags and throw them away in the convent next door." Drinking water is even more serious. "Carrefour is blessed with many little springs. But the problem is that they are running under the destroyed houses and the decomposing bodies. It's very unhealthy, yes. But we don't have any choice at all." The other choice is to walk downhill to the adjacent camp, pay for a bucket of water, and carry it back up the hill."

Olga and Mme. Odrigue have made frequent visits to NGO and local government offices. Finally after all their efforts, in April, three months after the earthquake, Save the Children distributed 244 tarps for 427 families. Before that they were sleeping under bedsheets. And nothing has arrived since. "Nou bouke pale!" We're tired of talking!

In cases like these, IOM acts as "camp manager of last resort," and is supposed to conduct monthly visits to the camps. The problem, according to IOM staff, is a lack of resources. "We're basically the go-between. All we can do is ask NGOs to adopt a site, make referrals." To this end, IOM has invested a significant amount of time and funds to the "DTM" databases and "Yellow Pages," listing the NGO camp management agency, the camp committees, and the NGOs offering services. What is done with this information, especially outlining gaps in services? "It's up to the Haitian state, the local governments and the NGOs to provide necessary services." How do they find out about problems? People are supposed to call the CMOs, or these CMOs will find out in the monthly site visits.

Clearly, the system hasn't been working very well for Olga and her 2500 neighbors. When I gave these officially registered groups the local CMO's number, they were met with suspicion and defensiveness.

The "WASH" cluster has adopted a more hands-on approach, more actively engaging the local authorities and the NGOs. Their "cluster" (one of twelve) meetings are held in the municipal government offices, to be more accessible to camp committees and local governments. Tellingly this is one of two clusters that are organized by the Haitian government and not the international community (the Minister of Women's Condition and Rights co-organizes the gender-based violence cluster). According to WASH cluster staff, the issue is about NGOs' willingness to work in a given area. Cité Soleil is far underserved because NGOs are afraid to, or don't want to, work there. WASH and the IOM have a close collaboration in Cité Soleil, "but we can't do more than push. The NGOs would rather work in the less badly hit, wealthier suburb of Petion-Ville (also close to their offices) rather than where the greatest need is," decried the Cité Soleil IOM officer, who predicted that my data would show a much lower rate of coverage in his area.

The situation of duplication in Bobin, which in the end meant that both NGOs dropped it, would never have occurred in Cité Soleil. "I can barely get the NGOs to come visit Cité Soleil, Delmas 2, Bel-Air, etc. Some say that they can't. Some say that their car rental insurance won't cover it. Some say they are legally prevented. In any case, these are the areas of greatest need." Feast or famine, the problem is the same: lack of NGO coordination and the Haitian government's inability to mandate coverage.

As, of course, is the result.

In addition to these problems faced by officially-represented camp resident committees who are working to bring services to their neighbors, the committees themselves - and their relationship with NGOs - represent obstacles to many. According to the IOM, 95% of camps have resident committees. NGOs are officially encouraged to work with the committees, as one agency staff put it, "to check off the box for local participation." Some NGOs give committees the power to distribute the aid, either from a belief in local empowerment or efficiency. But according to the Humanitarian Accountability Project (HAP) - who any day now will be releasing their report on resident committees - NGOs know very little about them. In a presentation to the CCCM cluster meeting a couple of weeks ago, HAP reported that in the camp they studied, the camp committee actively excluded other local organizations, failed to include the population and certainly the most vulnerable (handicapped people and women with infants), and distributed aid in a non-transparent manner. At the cluster meeting, many NGO camp managers shared similar stories of non-accountable committees.

Missing from NGO staff analyses was their role in the problem.

True, immediately following the earthquake, many organizations did spring up organically as a means for survival and an expression of solidarity and unity. Some like CAJIT and several women's organization camps in Léogâne clearly do have some impact with little outside resources and a true, bottom-up structure. But in far too many cases, the committees were formed, to put it bluntly in the words of a committee itself, "to get aid from the NGOs."

Such is the case in Delmas 2, in a very large public plaza - ironically named, "Peace Plaza." A grassroots organization, Men Nan Men (hand in hand), was founded on December 15 1990, the day before the election of Aristide. They have more than 2000 members, a formal leadership structure, an elected committee that meets weekly and a monthly tèt ansanm - roundtable - to discuss neighborhood problems. When the earthquake struck they were poised to offer leadership, and they did help neighbors assemble and share their limited means to ensure people's survival. So it was a big surprise to Men Nan Men to find out that when a big foreign NGO came into the area, another group of people had been selected as the official camp committee, one that was just started after the earthquake instead of they who had been around for 20 years. "You have to accept it," president Marie Berthe Israel sighed. "You have no choice. That's who the NGOs contact with."

All the same, Men Nan Men continues to advocate for the neighborhood, since they have deep ties and still have their regular meetings. They wrote a series of letters to NGOs asking for particular aid to arrive: to USAID, Concern, Viva Rio, etc. Berthe showed me a rejection letter - it was a form letter - from Concern stating that they were unable to finance the project. "We have people we are accountable to," she said. "Every time we write a letter, people in the camp think that means the aid is arriving. When it doesn't, people ask us where it went. People are counting on us."

The camp - housing 6901 families - was indeed lacking in very many services. More than six months following the earthquake, the vast majority of families sleep under tarps, not tents. There were only a handful of tents in the camp, nestled underneath the tarps. So there isn't even an illusion of security or privacy that tents provide. Worse, there were only a dozen toilets installed in the camp, alongside the road. They were overtaxed to the point of smelling very foul. There was no escaping the smell. In addition to the human feces and urine was the pungent mix of mud and trash. According to Men Nan Men leaders there were no trash receptacles to manage the waste, so it just collected on the perimeter of the camp where the toilets, the first aid station provided by Concern, and the water was located. Water was just being distributed in the camp as I arrived, so there was a very long line of people waiting with their 5-gallon buckets. It was crowded and noisy. People in the back of the line looked very worried, as if they seemed sure that the water would run out by the time it was their turn. The health situation is also bad; it's a several kilometer walk to the nearest hospital. A volunteer "ajan sante" staffed the tent provided by Concern, unable to do more than dress wounds or give out aspirin.

People said over and again that NGOs need to sit down with the community - the whole community, when it meets - and listen to their concerns.

Berthe and the other Men Nan Men members are discouraged: NGOs appear to them to lack the will to help. Said one frustrated youth, "NGOs know the problems to resolve, but they want you to be in misery before they give you, make you suffer." And another, "They have the means to help. If they don't help, ONGs wouldn't exist, and it's because of these problems that they exist. If all problems were resolved there would never be NGOs."

It seems the NGOs want to keep people in the situation of constantly needing them, of constantly having to ask for aid, of selling their dignity for a little help. That's why some at Men Nan Men felt they were pushed aside in favor of this group that was just created the moment the NGO showed up. To them and other residents I've spoken with, NGOs don't want people who are educated, who are organized, who can demand their rights are respected. They prefer committees who are tèt bese, with their heads down, waiting and happy to receive whatever gifts the NGOs give.

This issue of formal representation has other, more serious consequences. In Soeurs Salessiens, a large Catholic school in Carrefour, the officially recognized committee is the school administration and its representative one of the nuns who run the school.

This means that the NGOs offering services only hear from the school administration. Said Mura St. Badette, president of OVS, the Organization of Victims of the January 12th Earthquake, "We know there are NGOs outside. But [the school administration] doesn't give us space to meet with any agency. In other words, when an NGO comes, we can never see them. It's not that NGOs don't want to talk with us, but they never have the opportunity to meet with the population. And the nuns would tell you that everything's going well. Ok?"

Not everything is going well.

One issue is regarding the religious orders' means of security. Badette explained, "From 6:00, 6:30, 7:00, they lock the gates. In other words, we're in a prison." What if you're sick? I asked. "No, you just have to die! They won't authorize you to leave." School officials rebuilt the wall that was destroyed in the quake, but much higher.

The most pressing issue for Badette and others also involves security. Agents acting as security for the school have been pressuring people out. According to the OIM database 5169 families lived in the camp. But school officials have designs to close the camp. Said Badette, "from time to time you hear some pressure that they're going to force us out. And recently they just said, 'tomorrow, you have to leave.'" By the time of our first visit last Monday, over 2,000 people had already been moved. Several of the tents were ripped. Others were still standing in place, emptied of the people. "But several of us have had our tents ripped up," recalled Badette. "And we have nowhere to go. We're forced to stay here. Some people just left their things because they have nowhere to go with them."

School officials had taken fingerprints and asked for copies of all official documents, asking people what amount of loan they would need to move. People became afraid that with all the official documentation they would be held legally to the loan, despite the fact that people didn't get that amount. According to Badette, the IOM was surprised to find out that people only got 2500 gourdes, about $63, because school and NGO officials told them residents were getting much, much more. Badette summoned people who had been moved to offer proof.

The school has issued a deadline of next Sunday, August 15, for the rest of the people to move. But despite the offer of 2500 gourdes (Badette argued that not everyone received it), there has been no resettlement. So OVS began their efforts to negotiate with the church and the mayor's office to find suitable relocation quarters.

Not only were OVS' efforts in vain, they met with retaliation. On Thursday, when I was meeting with Badette and other leaders to attend a meeting that had been scheduled on the camp with the mayor's office, an individual known to be working with the official security guards came to Badette's tent with a knife. Badette said that he received death threats, and presumed this was an assassination attempt. Not finding Badette, the assailant ripped all the surrounding tents.

The following day, Badette went to the municipal court to offer a deposition, where I met him. Hopefully not because of the presence of foreigners, the judge, Franz Guillou saw Badette right away and we drove with him back to Soeurs Salessiens, where judge Guillou assessed the damage to the tent and took three people's testimony. During the 15 minutes we were there, this same assailant locked the gate, keeping us from our scheduled 11:00 appointment with Mayor Yvon Jerome and his two assistant mayors in City Hall. Enraged, Judge Guillou demanded that the door be opened. Finally, after 10 minutes, his attendant police officer arrested the assailant and the uniformed security guards opened the gates. Within minutes, Judge Guillou issued a warrant and protection order.

While the situation just described made us forty minutes late, we did end up meeting with Mayor Jerome, Assistant Mayor Blake, and staff, during which time Jerome called the school administration to invite them to meet with OVS. They agreed.

Mayor Jerome has made a reputation for negotiating with land owners. Many in the international community look to him as a model, crediting the success of unblocking land tenure by holding community meetings and building houses in Diquini, where ADRA has worked for years, to his active engagement (additionally, the traffic jams are caused not by piles of rubble waiting to be carted away but by teams rebuilding the national highway). He reiterated to Badette and others that regrettably the city has no developable land to resettle the people remaining at Soeurs Salessiens.

Breaking their promise to OVS and Mayor Jerome, the school administration failed to show up to the meeting, so Jerome issued Badette a police officer as security detail (according to Badette, the assailant was released from jail). So while his life is no longer in immediate danger, Badette's fate is far from settled. He and his neighbors have a week left to find a solution.

And he is far from alone.

While the physical threats may be extreme, Badette's situation is unfortunately quite common. In Carrefour alone, seven other camps are also in the same situation. IOM's May database included 42 camps, or 5% of the metro area, that were officially closed. In the next two months, 19 of my random selection of 104, or 18%, had closed. Student assistants have uncovered several other cases of imminent camp closure. International Action Ties is also following the cases of several other forced closures, yesterday meeting with three groups in Ruelle Figaro, in Petion-Ville, including former residents of Camp Immaculée, evacuated because of unchecked physical violence. All faced similar issues of the private land owners icing people out by withholding necessary life-saving services, like water.

This issue of forced eviction is greater than is generally known, and shows signs of heating up with the political campaign. Just like Carline's neighbors, land owners are losing their patience.

Mayor Jerome put the matter most succinctly: "the issue is that it's private property. And we the government don't have any public land we can make available to you."

This is undoubtedly going to be the biggest political challenge facing the candidates: what to do when the rights of 1.7 million people to protection and housing clash with the right to private property.

To some, the answer is clear. Article 22 of Haiti's constitution specifies the right to safe housing. Representing other residents facing similar eviction threat, at a recent Bureaux des Avocats Internationaux (BAI, international lawyers' office) press conference, Mario Joseph argued, "the state has the right to declare private property for social and housing purposes under the 8th of July 1921 Decree on the Recognition of Public Interest."

How can this dilemma be solved? Unfortunately it might come down to, whose rights matter more, the 1.7 million homeless or the hundreds of private landowners?

Badette has been in touch with two groups, BAI and Fòs Refleksyon ak Aksyon pou Koze Kay (FRAKKA, the reflection and action force for housing), who have offered legal, technical, tactical, organizational, and moral support. Both groups have been involved in defending rights of internally displaced people, IDPs, particularly the right to decent housing. Recently the two groups teamed up with Batay Ouvriye to organize a sit-in this coming Thursday, the 12th, seven months after the earthquake, in front of the National Palace, at 10:00.

Unfortunately Badette, Olga, Berthe, and Carline are not alone in their struggles for daily necessities. Like the thousands who are contemplating moving back into their damaged homes, we need to ask, are they just falling through the cracks, or is the foundation itself unsound?

Prudence - not to mention justice - demands that we not wait til the next disaster to find out.

Mark Schuller is Assistant Professor of African American Studies and Anthropology at York College, the City University of New York. He co-edited Capitalizing on Catastrophe: Neoliberal Strategies in Disaster Reconstruction and co-directed documentary Poto Mitan: Haitian Women, Pillars of the Global Economy. Having researched NGOs in Haiti since 2001, he is studying the impact of aid on conditions and governance in the IDP camps this summer. He can be reached at: mschuller@york.cuny.edu

 

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