Commentary by Mark Danner

HAITI is everybody's cherished tragedy. Long before the great earthquake struck the country like a vengeful god, the outside world, and Americans especially, described, defined, marked Haiti most of all by its suffering. Epithets of misery clatter after its name like a ball and chain: Poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. One of the poorest on earth. For decades Haiti's formidable immiseration has made it among outsiders an object of fascination, wonder and awe. Sometimes the pity that is attached to the land -- and we see this increasingly in the news coverage this past week -- attains a tone almost sacred, as if Haiti has taken its place as a kind of sacrificial victim among nations, nailed in its bloody suffering to the cross of unending destitution
Now read on

A bruising row has broken out between mostly French aid groups and the US military about how coveted landing spots are doled out among charity groups and prominent visitors by the U.S. Air Force.

Médecins Sans Frontières, the international emergency medical relief group that was founded in France, has seen eight of its planes from Europe diverted, the most recent on Wednesday.

In classic "scoop" fashion relief groups met in Haiti of Friday with the U.S. military authorities for "discussions at the highest levels to find a solution for the Port-au-Prince airport congestion". Even flights from the World Food Program, a United Nations agency were diverted said Philippe Martou, deputy chief of aviation service who was joining the protest meeting.

"It's a very confusing situation and difficult to understand," said Marie-Noëlle Rodrigue, deputy director for operations for Médecins Sans Frontières in Paris.

The rescue came as the UN said rescuers were winding down searches for survivors and focusing on relief work.

This video report shows a 69-year-old Haitian woman dragged from the rubble of a collapsed building on Thursday in a hospital in Port-au-Prince:

Haitians have faced their tragedy with dignity and stoicism - not that you would know it from the way the disaster has been reported
Just a couple of hours before the earthquake hammered poor Haiti, I was reorganising my bookshelves at home. In the Haiti section I came across a lovely old volume I'd bought from a wandering bookseller in Port-au-Prince on one of my many visits to the former "Pearl of the Antilles", once - incredibly - the richest colony in the world.

January 22, 2010

PART 1: Bail Rules Keep U.S. Jails Stuffed With Inmates, an extraordinary three-part report by NPR

By LAURA SULLIVAN of NPR.org
On the East River just across from Rikers Island sits a barge officially called the Vernon C. Bain Center. But every judge, layer and inmate in New York knows it as The Boat -- a giant, floating jail docked in the Bronx.

Sometimes when the wind blows, you can feel it list just a little.

It is here that I first meet Shadu Green in June 2009. He is locked in a day room, still wearing the T-shirt and jeans he had on when he was arrested three weeks earlier.

In here, "every day is horrible," he says, leaning against one of the green walls. "I mean, I try not to show emotion because in here, you show emotions and they eat you alive."

Green, 25, is charged with a series of misdemeanors after getting pulled over in his car. But he doesn't have to be here. He has been granted bail. A judge has decided he is likely to show up for court when he's supposed to -- if he can post a $1,000 cash deposit. A bondsman has offered to post the money for him, for a $400 nonrefundable fee.

Green doesn't have $1,000. He doesn't have $400. He doesn't have 44 cents to mail a letter to his mother asking for bail money.

So like thousands of inmates here and hundreds of thousands nationwide, Green is left with two options: He can fight his case -- but he'll have to do it from here, behind bars -- or he can plead guilty and take the 60-day sentence prosecutors are offering him and go home.

The only problem, he says in a hushed voice so other inmates don't hear him, is that he believes he's not guilty.

"It's not a choice," Green says, "because if you don't have money, you have to stay here. It's ruining your life either way you put it. Either way
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Aid flowed into Port Au Prince on Thursday, and relief workers began shifting their focus to longer-term challenges, primary among them providing shelter for as many as a million people displaced by last week's earthquake.

Those who have not joined the exodus into the countryside now face a daunting search for shelter in the capital, where half of all buildings are estimated to have collapsed. The danger of venturing back inside was underscored on Wednesday morning, when a strong aftershock struck, causing at least seven buildings to collapse. No one was reported killed by the new quake, but lack of sufficient medical treatment adds hundreds, if not thousands, to the daily death toll among the injured. Hundreds of thousands of Haitians are taking refuge makeshift settlements that have sprung up across the capital, according to the United Nations' International Organization for Migration.
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Iris Pérez and Antúnez

Cuban human rights activist Jorge Luís García Pérez -- best known as "Antúnez" -- was arrested on Tuesday, along with his wife and another activist in the town of Palma Soriano, in Santiago de Cuba province. They were working to organize an independent library named after the late Gloria Amaya, the matriarch of one of Cuba's most prominent family of dissidents.

Antúnez has already spent more than 17 years as a political prisoner, but defending those who would open libraries in Cuba is not something that bothers the European Union presidency, currently held by Spain. 

The Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos-- knew better than to meet with any families of political prisoners, independent journalists, or human-rights organizations when he traveled to Cuba in October. This reflects Madrid's closeness to the Castro regime, an approach that is not necessarily shared by others in the EU.

But  last Monday, the Spanish Euro MP Luis Yáñez-Barnuevo García was abruptly expelled from Cuba, hours after arriving with a tourist visa. The rebuff of the Socialist Member of the European Parliament caused predictable paroxysms of fury in Madrid, where Cuba's ambassador was summoned for a dressing down. 

Once can imagine the 'Casablanca'-like conversation as the two sides winked at each other at the Spanish Foreign Ministry:  

Captain Renault/Spanish Diplomat: I'm shocked, shocked, to find that gambling/repression is going on in here!

Sadly the repression under Raul Castro is if anything worse that it was under Fidel. In  April 2007he was released from jail, but he has been rearrested many times since.

Hat Tip to Marc Masferrer for lettng us know  that according to the Cuban Democratic Directorate in Miami, police beat Antúnez as they took him and the others into custody.

The third dissident, Raudel Ávila Losada, at whose home the arrests took place, was still in custody on Wednesday, apparently facing a charge of "assault."

The whereabouts of Antúnez and his wife were not known. A group of activists standing in vigil outside secret police headquarters in Santiago, known as "Versailles," reported they saw the pair on Wednesday being taken to the local airport in a patrol car, according to the Directorate.

They urged the world take notice of what happened. Read more here, including how to follow Antunez in Twitter.

The Haitian football federation was meeting in its three-story Port-au-Prince headquarters when the earthquake hit. Thirty officials, coaches and referees died and another 20 remain missing, according to the Caribbean Football Union.

Yves-Jean Bart, the federation president, was badly injured but survived. None of the national team players were believed to be in the building at the time.

Broward College soccer coach Ernst ``Nono'' Jean-Baptiste and retired U.S. national team defender Fernando Clavijo are both former coaches of the Haitian national team and have been trying desperately to contact team members and coaches in Haiti.

``I am afraid to answer the phone because it's almost all bad news,'' said Baptiste, who played for the Haitian national team and the Fort Lauderdale Strikers and is a consultant with the Haitian federation. ``We lost one of our best coaches, Jean-Yves Labaze. He led our under-17 team to the youth World Cup in Korea in 2007. Who knows what will happen to Haitian soccer now? At some point, people there will need therapy, and soccer will be the best therapy for them.''

Clavijo coached Haiti from 2003 to 2005. He has been unable to reach his assistant coaches and most of his players from that team, which tied the United States 1-1 at the Orange Bowl on March 13, 2004.

Comment & Analysis

Among the biggest benificiaries of the earthquake that devastated Haiti just over a week ago are the private military and security companies (PMSCs) selling their often dubious services in the impoverished country.

Red24, run by a former lieutenant colonel in Britain's elite Parachute Regiment was quickly "on the ground" in Haiti, after being hired to find and rescue four American students missing after the quake.

Shorty after the disaster, the Boston Globe reported on the private security firms already deploying to Port-au-Prince, many claimed to have begun search and rescue operations within
hours of the quake.