Soon after almost every disaster the crimes begin: ruthless, selfish, indifferent to human suffering, and generating far more suffering. The perpetrators go unpunished and live to commit further crimes against humanity. They care less for human life than for property. They act without regard for consequences.

Who isn’t horrified at the devastation in Haiti? We all want to do something to help, but following the football ads or Michelle Obama into texting money to the Red Cross is obviously not a sensible approach. Disaster relief is a complicated real-world drama that involves a lot of really skilled people who need incredible back-up and support. I have a good friend who spent two years in Thailand after the tsunami building replacement houses and developing local, on-the-ground institutions to channel the volunteers and aid that were coming in.

01/14/09- A natural disaster has descended upon Haiti whose scope we only are seeing the surface of at this time. The Haitian people will be struggling to rebuild their lives and their home possibly for decades in light of unprecedented collapse, both physical and social. Yet despite the unpredictability of earthquakes, this disaster is unnatural, a monstrosity of our time. The extent of the damage of the earthquake is part of the cost of unrestrained exploitation which at every step put profit above the health, safety, and well being of the Haitian people. While the world watches on ready to help, power is being dealt an opportunity. The Haitian workers and peasants have been fighting for their rights to even the most basic level of existence for decades, while the UN-occupying force, the state, and the ruling elites maintain the social misery without relenting. Now as Port-Au-Prince is in rubble, new opportunities arise for rulers to rebuild Haiti in their own interests, and likewise for the Haitian workers and peasants to assert their right to their own Haiti, one where they will be not be forced to live in dangerous buildings, and work merely to fill the pockets of elites, foreign or domestic.

A network of street medics, action medics, and other skilled individuals with politics of mutual aid has developed to help send organized teams of volunteers to Haiti to help earthquake survivors. This network is building off experiences gained working at the Common Ground Clinic in New Orleans and as street medics and campaign medics from the West Coast to Appalachia to the Northeast Anarchist Network, with varying levels of medical and herbal knowledge & clinical experience.

As predictions for the death toll from the Haitian earthquakes rise over 200,000, ABC News have reported that planes carrying medical equipment and relief supplies are having to compete with soldiers for the valuable slots at Port-au-Prince airport which was taken over by the US military after the quake. Since the start of the great anti-slavery republican insurrection nearly 220 years ago, Haiti has been presented as a dangerous place incapable of running its own affairs and requiring foreign intervention.

It's amazing the ability of capitalism to reproduce itself out of just about anything. Hundreds of thousands die and Security Companies find a way to profit. And I ask myself why I'm so angry all the time and can't sleep.

This morning, CNN was all excited about the "looting. in Haiti." Looting? Give me a break. These are people who have nothing managing to find, for once in their life, a few items to make life a little more livable. CNN's Anderson Cooper in one report decried that "these("looters") are not people taking things to survive." What the hell does Anderson Cooper know about survival in Haiti? He and his cronies don some Khaki pants and suddenly act like compassionate human beings who care so much for the people of Haiti. Next week Anderson will be back home sleeping in his comfortable bed. The people of Haiti aren't going anywhere though and few of them have slept on a comfortable bed ever.

I returned from Haiti just a couple of days before a powerful earthquake rocked the country on January 12. I was in Haiti on a solidarity delegation to document human rights abuses by the United Nations Stabilization Mission (MINUSTAH) and to observe preparations for February's legislative elections. Other members of the HAW Steering Committee encouraged me to share my thoughts with the broader HAW membership and friends on the historical background to this catastrophe.

01/14/09- A natural disaster has descended upon Haiti whose scope we only are seeing the surface of at this time. The Haitian people will be struggling to rebuild their lives and their home possibly for decades in light of unprecedented collapse, both physical and social. Yet despite the unpredictability of earthquakes, this disaster is unnatural, a monstrosity of our time. The extent of the damage of the earthquake is part of the cost of unrestrained exploitation which at every step put profit above the health, safety, and well being of the Haitian people. While the world watches on ready to help, power is being dealt an opportunity. The Haitian workers and peasants have been fighting for their rights to even the most basic level of existence for decades, while the UN-occupying force, the state, and the ruling elites maintain the social misery without relenting. Now as Port-Au-Prince is in rubble, new opportunities arise for rulers to rebuild Haiti in their own interests, and likewise for the Haitian workers and peasants to assert their right to their own Haiti, one where they will be not be forced to live in dangerous buildings, and work merely to fill the pockets of elites, foreign or domestic.

When Black slaves threw off the shackles of slavery and ousted French colonialist from their island nation, the world took note. In fact, the world, the imperialist world, never stopped taking note. Imagine the fear the white slave holders in the American south felt when they heard the news. The fear the Black Jacobin revolution in Haiti has never really passed from the colonialist, the imperialists, the racists. The history of Haiti makes that only too clear. Let the corporate media confront that while they shed their crocodile tears for the people of Haiti. Where have they and their bourgeois allies been for the last two hundred years or so? What were all the good white Christian folk thinking about as they weren't passing out bibles to people who had no food? Cashing their checks and making their reservations for the here to come, that's where. It makes me sick.