Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
Violence breaks out in Kenya The UN deploys international police forces to impose law and order in beleaguered countries. But nobody in their right mind thinks Kenyan police have a snowball’s chance in hell of doing that in Haiti. The Kenyan police landed yesterday. But nothing betrayed the folly of their mission quite like Kenya… Read more.
US abandons Haiti It’s not quite as desperate as the way the US abandoned Vietnam or as chaotic as the way it abandoned Afghanistan. But the way the US is abandoning Haiti is even more shameless and unconscionable. The Department of State warned in a statement of a high threat of violent crime and kidnapping throughout the [country]. It… Read more.
As the first planeloads of angry Haitian migrants arrived in Port-au-Prince on Sunday after being repatriated from the U.S.-Mexico border, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security defended the deportations, saying misinformation is behind the attempts to enter the United States. Emphasizing that the administration is accelerating repatriation flights to Haiti and possibly other… Read more.
Over the past week, Afghanistan dominated conversations among personal friends as much as it dominated coverage on cable news networks. But I never failed to spare a thought for Haiti – as “Haitian Earthquake 2021: Déjà vu or Voodoo…?” August 14, attests. Reports abound about chronic political corruption and dysfunction making people less inclined to… Read more.
A major earthquake struck western Haiti on Saturday, likely causing high casualties and widespread disaster, the U.S. Geological Survey said, and sending shock waves across the Caribbean, where people fled their homes for fear they might collapse. The 7.2-magnitude earthquake quake struck 8 km (5 miles) from the town of Petit Trou de Nippes, about… Read more.
Episode 42: They Can Blame the Americans and French, But Haitians Are Mostly to Blame… Related commentaries: Haiti… Listen.
Reports have abounded for years about peacekeepers and aid workers preying on the hapless people they are supposed to be protecting and aiding, respectively. And they have perpetrated their abuses in refugee camps or safe zones from Asia to the Caribbean and all points in between. Here in part is how I commented on this… Read more.
Of course, only an asshole like him would do so. President Trump’s dismissal of Haiti, El Salvador and all of Africa as ‘shithole countries’ whose inhabitants are not desirable for U.S. immigration shocked people around the world and provoked swift condemnation. The president made the remarks Thursday during a White House meeting with lawmakers and suggested… Read more.
I appreciate your inquiries about how my family and friends in the Caribbean weathered Matthew. Even though proverbial sitting ducks, they all hunkered down, and we all prayed for the best. Hurricane Matthew, the fiercest Caribbean storm in nearly a decade, slammed into the Bahamas early on Thursday and intensified as it barreled toward the southeastern… Read more.
There have been many reports over the years on peacekeepers standing by and watching warring factions kill each other – as they did, to the U.N.’s eternal shame, in Rwanda. There have not been nearly as many reports, however, on peacekeepers exacerbating the scourge of civil strife by preying on people who depend on them for… Read more.
