23352: radtimes: Haitian Blood is on our Hands (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radtimes <resist@best.com>

Haitian Blood is on our Hands

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0928-10.htm

Published on Tuesday, September 28, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
by Laura Flanders

Will someone give us our priorities back? Who do you think needs taxpayer
dollars most: an anti-choice Catholic health insurer, or the flood-stricken
Haitian people? Just wondering.

The New York Times reported Sunday that the Bush administration has decided
to team up with a private Catholic organization to promote a
savings-account type health program that specifically excludes coverage for
sterilization, artificial insemination, abortion and birth control. It's
all part of the administration's $1 billion initiative to involve religious
organizations in all types of federal social programs.

For the plan, which will begin enrolling federal workers in 31 Illinois
counties in November, workers and our government will pay a Catholic
insurer, OSF HEALTH. The OSF option "empowers" federal employees by giving
them more "choices" Kay Coles James, the director of the White House Office
of Personnel Management told the Times. James is a former spokeswoman for
the National Right To Life Committee, and former dean of Pat Roberston's
Regent University.

Talk about massaging the message into meaninglessness. To reiterate, under
the OSF plan you can't get coverage for contraceptives. For federal workers
in some states, like Illinois, the Catholic plan is the only
savings-account plan available. This initiative isn't about increasing
choices, it's about killing the principle of an entitlement to
comprehensive coverage, and it's about paying public cash for partisan
collaborators. The people being "empowered" are those who'll pull out all
their troops to keep George W. Bush in office.

Meanwhile, if you want to talk about federal dollars, how many are going to
emergency relief for Haiti? I know we're smack bang in the middle of an
election, but who's responsible for that poor benighted country if not the
cabal that destabilized the Haitian's elected government, kidnapped its
president, and pumped enough money and guns to violent conspirators until
the place exploded?

It's not just a hurricane and flooding that's extracting a thousand-plus
death toll in Haiti right now. It's the utter collapse of that country's
already fragile infrastructure. The flood waters rose in Haiti into a
deadly vacuum left by a US-backed insurgency, a vicious coup and its
aftermath, which has seen scores of local officials slain and no one held
accountable. Now who's mobilizing to help?

So far, the US Embassy in Haiti says it has dispersed just $50,000. Under
pressure, USAID has now announced they're pledging $1.9 million for relief
supplies and services. But heck, the government of Venezuela immediately
offered $1 million to Haiti; the European Union $1.8 million. USAID has a
two person team in country. 140 Uruguayan soldiers left this weekend to
reinforce about 600 U.N. peacekeepers.

George talks a blue streak about American security. What about our
neighbor's security, Mr. President? Food security, health security…life
security? You want to talk about conscience, morality, faith, empowerment
and choices? Just as Kofi Annan said last week, those who like to lecture
others about such things, have a responsibility to practice what they lecture.

This president sent in guns and marines to militarize Haiti. Now how about
sending in enough investment to build a sewer system? How about $1 billion.
That's the amount the Bush team plan to hand out in patronage to
reactionary US churches.

The director of the World Food Program's Haiti operation, Guy Gavreau, said
Friday that aid groups have so far been able to get food to only about
25,000 people in the hardest hit area, Gonaives - one-tenth of those who
need it. Well over a thousand have died in the aftermath of Tropical Storm
Jeanne and there are more storms coming.

Mostly Catholic, Haitians vote too, Mr. President, but they're not moved by
your shenanigans with public-worker health care. Haitian blood is on your
hands, George Bush. For that matter, it's on all of ours.

Or don't we care, when it's only blood the people there are pumping, not
the black stuff?
------------------
Friends suggest that emergency relief can be sent via the World Food
Program at the UN/ attn: Charles Vincent, director of the HAITI program:
http://www.wfp.org or through Oxfam. Another reliable NGO, directed by
Haitians, is recommended by a Haitian filmmaker who's been in Gonaives for
the last month: PRODEVA, based in Ennery. PRODEVA #76, Blv 15 Octubre, BP
15832, Petion-Ville tel: 510 7648 email: PRODEVA@dnetmail.dnetwork.net

Laura Flanders is the host of "The Laura Flanders Show" on Air America
Radio, and the editor of "The W Effect; Sexual Politics in the Age of
Bush." (Feminist Press, 2004.) Find out more at www.lauraflanders.com.

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