18 January 2010 By Dave Lindorff The Christian Science Monitor, in a second
article, quoted Laurence Korb, former assistant
secretary of defense and now based at the Center for
American Progress, as saying that the US, which is
leading the relief efforts in Haiti, should “consider
tapping the expertise of neighboring Cuba,” which he
noted, “has some of the best doctors in the world--we
should see about flying them in.” As for the rest of the US media, they simply
ignored Cuba's role and actions, focusing instead on
the US government's plans for aid--plans
which were long on talk and short on immediate help. Left unmentioned was the reality that Cuba
already had nearly 350 doctors, emergency technicians
and other medical personnel posted to Haiti to
help with the day-to-day health needs of this poorest
nation in the Americas, and that those medical
professionals were the first to respond to the
disaster, setting up a hospital right next to the main
hospital in Port-au-Prince which collapsed in the
earthquake. Far from “doing nothing” about the disaster as the
right-wing propagandists at Fox-TV were charging, Cuba
has been one of the most effective and critical
responders to the crisis, because it had set up a
medical infrastructure before the quake,
which was able to mobilize quickly and start treating
the victims. The American emergency response, predictably, has
focussed primarily, at least in terms of personnel and
money, on sending the hugely costly and inefficient US
military--a fleet of aircraft and a nuclear-powered
aircraft carrier--a factor that should be considered
when examining that $100 million figure the Obama
administration claims is being allocated to emergency
aid to Haiti. Given that the cost of operating an
aircraft carrier, including crew, is roughly $2
million a day, just sending a carrier to
Port-au-Prince for two weeks accounts for a quarter of
the announced American aid effort, and while many of
the military personnel sent there will certainly be
doing actual aid work, delivering supplies and
guarding supplies, many, given America’s long history
of brutal military/colonial control of Haiti, will
inevitably be spending their time ensuring continued
survival and control of the parasitic pro-US political
elite in Haiti. (There were even complaints, from
groups like Doctors Without Borders, and even the
French government, that the US military had given
priority to military flights at the Port-au-Prince
Airport, blocking actual aid flights from landing
during the critical three days when people trapped in
rubble needed rescuing before they died of their
wounds or of dehydration.) The reality is that for years, the US has basically
ignored the ongoing day-to-day human crisis in Haiti,
while Cuba, a poor country itself that continues to
struggle under a decades-long US embargo, has been
doing the yeoman work of providing basic health care
to its neighboring island nation. The corporate media obligingly and uncritically
cover the US aid effort. Meanwhile, with the exception
of such alternative outlets as Democracy Now! and the
magazine
Cuba News, Cuba's contribution is ignored,
misreported, or barely mentioned. (One searches in
vain through the many pages in the New York Times
devoted to the Haitian disaster for any mention of the
Cuban doctors or their busy field hospitals in
Port-au-Prince.) Clearly an unapologetically Communist nation coming
to the aid of a neighbor in need is simply not a story
that the American corporate media want to tell. Comments 💬 التعليقات |