Arivis and Avarice

Joegodson and Paul

Do you have the right to live if you are not helping to produce profits for those already awash in profit? Who do you allow to determine what your life is worth?

As we organize our fair trade enterprise, surrounded by an ever-expanding and increasingly ruthless empire of capital, we continually confront fundamental questions about the nature of human existence. Both in Canada and in Port-au-Prince, we see how our enterprise is irreconcilable with the global economy. And yet, it is only in the context of the current order that we can proceed.

Today’s reflections: what we reject. Then we consider the challenges that we face in operating in such an environment.

Haiti is already tied to Canada and other capitalist states through the exploitation of its labour force: waged-labour and peasantry. Canada, likewise, is now integrated into a global neoliberal order in which producers and consumers are kept apart and are ignorant of one another. Like the fair traders who have come before us, we place the producer and consumer at the centre of trade. And we place their welfare first. That move is absolute heresy in the empire of capital. Knowing first-hand the conditions of workers in the global economy can lead you in a couple of directions: resignation or refusal. Resignation is cowardly. What do we refuse and where does it lead us?

To the Haitian bourgeoisie, who have happily integrated themselves into the empire represented by Bill Clinton and his neoliberal thugs, we as workers represent nothing more than a potential profit. Once you accept that proposition and become what they require you to be, you close the door on your future. Seen from above, you are very, very small indeed. As the profit-makers climb higher and higher, you become smaller and smaller. No one worries about the ants that are squished while they go about their daily lives. On Wall Street and in the boardrooms of multinationals, we do not exist in any human form. So when we are crushed, it concerns no one. When you accept the authority of people who care nothing for your welfare, then you can only be contemptuous of yourself. Self-contempt is a global pandemic. If you refuse to allow yourself to be defined by those who want only to profit from you, you become dangerous to them.

Port-au-Prince is poisoned by the daily need for survival. This did not begin with the earthquake; but that didn’t help. Joegodson is currently and patiently organizing the artisans and talented workers who are becoming our partners in fair trade. We will be connecting those producers to Canadian consumers. On both sides of this equation, we know that we are speaking to a specific audience: those who, like us, refuse to believe that we exist to enrich those who are contemptuous of us. In the consuming nations, the number of people rejecting the neoliberal world order is growing, according to the figures for the fair trade movement worldwide. (This observation is not meant to whitewash the fair trade movement that is controlled and organized from the wealthy, consuming nations. We have something different in mind.) Meanwhile, the globalizers continue to try to bring every single human into dependency upon the market, where they control the flow of everything. But they cannot take your spirit unless you give it up. That is our strength.

Joegodson is confronting a sickness that is endemic in Haiti and that, for the moment, precludes inclusion in our project of a number of talented workers. In Creole, the ‘sickness’ is called arivis. These people have come to see nothing but the immediate profit that might follow from any action. They cannot plan for the future because the future ends today. They imagine nothing beyond that. They will haggle and fight to profit from everyone in each instance of daily life. They have absolutely no faith in authority, for very good reasons. Everyone is there to extract profit from you, just as they have been exploited in every conceivable manner. These people, the arivis, did not choose this system, but have become participants in its continuation by surrendering to the notion that their lives have no more meaning than profit for someone else. Once you reject the notion that you exist to profit someone, it is hard to see where to go, what to do, how to behave. There is no groundwork for that.

Just like the two authors have developed a relationship of trust across the international border that keeps consumers and workers apart, so Joegodson has nurtured many solid relations with Haitian workers: being one of them himself. Regrettably, most Haitian workers are not ready for the enterprise that we are creating. This is frustrating because we have to excuse even very talented people whose only question is, “How much will I get?” While that question is gold in the neoliberal world – testimony to the power of the ideology that greed must drive the world – it is not conducive to our vision and our enterprise. This also puts us at odds with the literature on fair trade that insists on inclusion. We happily encourage inclusion of all people in full appreciation of their gender, religion, race, sexuality, age, and physical ability, to name some of the most important divisions in Haiti. However, we can’t accept those who only want to profit from a marketing scheme. In that case, we would be undermining our vision. We start from the value of the human being and the nobility of work. We are operating in a world of our own making.

What is encouraging is that there is a number of very talented workers who have quietly been rejecting the system imposed on the poor from above but who have not been able to find the way to surmount it. We find that we are treading the same path that many people before us have already discovered. We are not the first to place human life – workers and the things they produce and consumers and the things they buy – before profit. It is dignity and respect, not profit, that we see as the foundation of a world we want to live in. As it happens, the quality of work is only enhanced by the dignity of the worker. Just as we are not the first to discover this vision, we don’t want to be the last. And so, we will be patient and allow our enterprise to grow as the vision convinces people that they are inherently valuable.

Money Flows Uphill

 Paul with Joegodson

We are organizing a fair trade enterprise connecting Canadian consumers and Haitian workers. Joegodson lives in Port-au-Prince; Paul in Montreal. Without pretence or illusions about our influence on global affairs, we believe our work is the most moral response to the current crises that face all of us. However, we must be careful. To establish this business, it seems most prudent to promote it as a straight-up exploitation of Haitian workers. If we acknowledge that our enterprise is a cooperative and that Haitians enter as something other than labourers valued at three dollars a day, we will have corporate interests, three states and their thugs on our backs. (A few very poor young men of Cite Soleil that the sweatshop owners buy to foment chaos are characterized in our culture as thugs. In reality, they don’t hold a candle to Clinton, Bush, and Harper as thugs-for-hire.)

As soon as Haiti began to tremble, we knew that humanitarian aid would be a cover for “development.” Haiti will not develop except on the backs of the poor. Almost all Haitians are poor. However, three months after the earthquake, Joegodson’s father Deland asked him, “Can’t Paul help?” He was talking about the desparate situation in a neighbourhood in Cite Soleil called Simon. It hit me like a brick I should have seen coming. I once lived nearby and know some of the people intimately. Over the years, Joegodson and I have become intimate friends.

At first I had very little hope that we could successfully petition Canadian NGOs for help for Simon. But, as we began to advocate in favour of allowing Simon’s local community organizations to control the funds that Canadians had donated, I became surprised at two things: the number of people who took an interest and the almost total lack of response. I wasn’t surprised that NGOs didn’t respond. But I was surprised that Canadians didn’t. I suspect that Canadians prefer to live with myths than reality. That is not intended as an insult. Reality is too complex to control. It is more comforting to believe that you understand the world. In that world, your actions have meaning. It is easiest to accept Haiti – and everything else – the way the media and our culture offers it to us. Real Haitians cannot be cast because they might interfere with the plot as written. Even knowing that the state and corporate media are mendacious does not bring you much closer to the truth. It simply positions you in opposition to them.

 Joegodson is also confronting the hypocrisy and outright lies in the very poor communities where he has always lived in Port-au-Prince. For years, we have been witnessing the structural and conceptual barriers that would divide us. But we have found that truth is more interesting than lies and that myths are most fascinating when we probe their purpose. We tentatively define truth as the thing you don’t want to see, you don’t want to say. It can also be the door you are afraid to open. Both of our societies rest on a mixture of lies and myths. Nothing can be assumed in intercultural or transnational relations.

The relations between Canadians and Haitians (as with relations between rich and poor nations in general) are controlled by the media, state, and, especially, capital. Anyone who thinks that they understand what is happening in Haiti by watching the news or listening to the minister of foreign affairs has to go back to the drawing board. Rather, allow Edward Said to open a door to a mature view of intercultural relations. For instance, very powerful interests will not allow even a cursory discussion of Haitian working conditions. As we began to work towards our goal, Joegodson could not understand why Canadians had donated so much money for Haitian victims of the earthquake if they didn’t want to help the poor workers in Port-au-Prince.

“They do want to help you, but as Haitians, not as workers,” I answered.

“But Haitians are workers,” Joegodson countered.

“That’s a contradiction that Canadians are willing to live with.”

Next door to Haiti, multinational corporations who employ Cubans must negotiate their salaries with Fidel Castro. The foreign enterprises are forced to pay wages considerably higher than the other Caribbean islands. However, the Cuban workers receive only a proportion of the salaries paid. The rest is used to fund hospitals, schools, and social programs so that all Cubans may live in dignity. To the Haitian poor, Cuba is paradise. In Haiti, the state assures that multinational corporations humiliate workers with a wage that the paternal Castro would never allow. Consequently, the Haitian poor have produced the most millionaires in the Caribbean, precisely because the poor earn next to nothing for their work. Taxes do not diminish the windfall that follows from the simple exploitation of the workers and peasants. So the state doesn’t provide services as it does in Cuba. The current reconstruction plans intend to lock this system into place.

Enter the foreign NGOs, literally. The Haitian oligarchy has absolutely no interest in the poor once they leave the sweatshops. However, they don’t mind if a bunch of humanitarian suckers want to come to the island and immunize a few. Build a hospital, a school, feed them if you feel like it. Anyone with a few dollars in his pocket is welcome into Haiti to do whatever he likes as long as it doesn’t interfere with the wage or working conditions. You can’t get near that. No NGO that wants to remain in business is able to say this.

A few months ago, producers from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s investigative program ‘The Marketplace’ contacted us to arrange our co-operation in a report documenting the conditions of Haitian workers being exploited by Canadian apparel companies. A few of those workers discuss their conditions on our site. We agreed in principle. Then, without any explanation, the producers ended the discussion. Hopefully, they have found better sources than our friends who were offering to collaborate. I think they made a mistake in not calling Joegodson after I passed along his number and encouraged them to call. There could not possibly be a better contact in all of Haiti to mediate this issue. Canadians can keep their eyes on the program this fall to see how – if – ‘The Marketplace’ has decided to follow up on that story.

People should think of which way money flows. Whether the NGO funds come from private donations or government revenues, they are going from the public to – at least in theory – build some kind of infrastructure in Haiti. How much of it ever gets there and how it is used is an important issue. What is more important still is what happens to the wealth created by the Haitian workers and peasants. It goes into the pockets of a few wealthy Haitians and, especially, multinational corporations. Those players give back, at best, token amounts for show – public relations. Haiti is a small player in this global process; however, because of its size and destitution, the effects are devastating. Haiti is becoming increasingly important to the United States as Chinese workers continue to refuse the conditions under which they slave.

Haiti’s fate was sealed when North Americans decided that they were responsible for the Haitian poor. Of course, it can be evidence of a generous and compassionate response to suffering. That is nice. But the debate over the reconstruction should not proceed without a clear sense of how money flows into and out of the island. Both the success and ultimate defeat of Canadian labour were the necessary conditions for the exploitation of Haitians. (The stronger Canadian labour became in its historic struggles with the needle trade industry, the more it put itself at risk to lose everything to more vulnerable workers elsewhere.)  It’s simply extraordinary to see how corporate power continues to profit at every turn. Canadians are now being flattered that they have demonstrated their generosity by donating to the victims. But they haven’t, of course. They have donated to the exploiters. In every direction, the money is transferring from the public for the benefit of private, often corporate, interests.

Haitians do not enter into real relationships with North American helpers in the cultural realm. From left to right, Haitians are barely recognizable as human. They are angelic victims waiting to be helped. They are a mass of goodness held under the thumb of evil imperial powers. These can be strategically helpful myths, but still myths. A mature analysis (towards which we aim) distinguishes myths from lies, but can see both. Moreover, the myth of the good, community-spirited and solidarity-seeking Haitian only lays the groundwork for the foil: the barbaric rapist that the MINUSTA troops will extinguish. Scour the media to learn about the working conditions of Haitian workers – the same people whose living conditions are thoroughly documented.

And so Canadians write both sides of the story before it goes to print or is aired. Politicians, diplomats, journalists, activists, humanitarians – it doesn’t really matter whom you look at. Whatever is missing, whatever is suppressed, will someday demand to be recognized. Chalmers Johnson calls it blowback. Why not table what you see up front? Because the groundwork has not been laid for honest discussion. If you want that, you are on your own.

Our work and friendship are partly based on a commitment to understand how Haitian and Canadian myths and lies function strategically in maintaining the international division of labour and profits. And so we can’t pretend that the people of Cite Soleil are whatever Canadians would like them to be. That game is played to the point of nausea by NGOs and some advocates of grassroots organizations. It is a political ploy that ultimately serves to dehumanize Haitians and undermine all real progress. How do Canadians buy these images of people starving, exploited, and just very thankful for the generosity? What world do they live in?

Patching up the Cracks

Joegodson and Paul

Since the First Supper served by the Community Kitchen last Wednesday, the organizers have been meeting with the discontented. Joegodson returned to his home community on Monday to help repair fissures that, left untended, threaten to topple efforts to rebuild and to unify.

What's at stake.

He tracked down the young men who had disrupted the First Supper and then threatened to destroy the Kitchen and appropriate the materials. Joegodson brought together seven guys from the group, each about sixteen or seventeen years old. They spoke at some length about their frustrations. They feel excluded from their own community and see no future for themselves: only demeaning sweatshop jobs if they agree to enslave themselves. It made sense that they threatened to take the raw materials of the Kitchen – the corrugated roof, the wooden frame – to serve their future. There is nothing else. A couple are already fathers with no means to care for their children. The Kitchen gives priority to the most vulnerable people in the community. However, the boys say that it’s not their fault that they aren’t pregnant, old, or handicapped. They agreed that the Kitchen was important but they want to be a part of it. It wasn’t difficult to find a way to integrate them into the project. If the Kitchen continues to operate, they will be hired on a rotating basis to assure order in the distribution of meals, protect the building from vandalism, and help with the general upkeep. They will be paid out of the provisions made for busboys and waiters in the plans. They are content with the prospect.

 Jhony, whose organization DAD (Dialogue pour l’action et le développement) conceived the Kitchen and organized its First Supper, tracked down those who were angry that they were not served. Many had never supported the Kitchen. Sometimes the rejection was based in nothing more than jealousy or personal dislike. Now they regret the fact that their neighbours who supported it from its inception are eating and they are excluded. Jhony searched with them for ways to keep the cracks from widening. Finally, the solution to which everyone agreed was that at least one person from every household would benefit. If the Kitchen cannot feed everyone, then whoever is most in need in each family takes a turn.

One of the reasons that many people resisted the Kitchen is a distrust of all promises of humanitarian aid. They have been subject to people coming through Cite Soleil taking censuses. Nothing has ever come of them. People come by with a clipboard and record the names of the members of the households. Then they go away and nothing changes. The general consensus among the people of Simon is that some NGOs are then using those records to pretend that they represent a list of people who have received aid. Of course, the local people have received nothing. Now, they trust no one. They don’t give out their names because they think that they are only helping others to extort money that was intended to help them. They refuse the scams. The First Supper was also the first aid (beyond the latrines built with Haven) that has actually materialized. It demonstrated that there was actually the possibility of aid. Now, they are opening up to that possibility.

In another part of Cite Soleil, a man with political ambitions is operating a similar Kitchen. There, the local people have determined that the bourgeoisie is funding him in the hope that, through the Kitchen, he will be able to buy the votes of the local people. This is an established tradition in Haitian electoral history. (In passing, it must be recognized that vote buying has a long tradition in all democracies. In earlier generations, those with means literally purchased votes. Still today, in what propagandists call ‘advanced democracies,’ voters are bought with promises of tax reductions, healthcare reform, or ending imperialist wars.) In the election of 2006, the American candidate for president of Haiti, Charles Henry Baker, was well known to have distributed large sums of cash in return for votes. People took the cash while it was available. At the same time, they knew better than to vote for Baker, a notorious sweatshop owner. Similarly, they are eating at the man’s Kitchen but will certainly not vote for him come November. Everyone knows that the day of the election will be the final meal at his humanitarian enterprise. That is one pragmatic argument in favour of postponing elections as long as possible.

There is no certainty that the initiative in Simon will continue to operate. The main issue at the moment is to assure that the people support it and that everyone sees it as his and her Community Kitchen.

First Supper

 Joegodson and Paul

The Community Kitchen served its first meal on Wednesday. The event will be remembered in Simon. At the moment, the introduction of a source of food has opened as many wounds as it has nourished the hungry. The organizers in Simon now face challenges greater than when everyone was hungry.

The kids got dressed up for the event. But food, they learned, can divide them from their neighbours.

How did it come about that the Kitchen was able to begin operations? The people from Canada Haiti Action Canada (notably Roger Annis) studied the plan that the local civil groups had tabled for a Community Kitchen in Cite Soleil. CHAN agreed to offer 450$US to the people of Simon in support of their goal to shape their own future. That was a generous offer in light of the limited means available to CHAN, a group that speaks out against injustice. But CHAN has gone a step further in entering into active relations with the Haitian poor. We will continue to probe the results and difficulties entailed in this enterprise, as long as it lasts and we are able. We will begin to see today why Canada’s ‘legitimate’ NGOs choose to limit their reports to heart-warming stories of zombie-like victims thankful for the beneficence of North Americans. Anything else must deal with the realities of the chronic and intended maldistribution of wealth, globally and locally. It’s not an accident that some humans are hungry.

Jhony and Baudelais ruminated over what to do with the windfall. Of course it was a far cry from what they need to carry out the program they had planned: one nutritious hot meal daily for the most vulnerable of Simon. So, they altered the plans to fit the funds donated.

Geurdie at the helm of operations, cooking for the members of the community most at risk of malnutrition.

They asked Geurdie if she would agree to cook. Geurdie is well respected in Simon. She had been an assistant to the local Madam Sarah. ‘Madam Sarah’ is the colloquial term for women who travel to the peasant markets outside of Port-au-Prince to buy produce that they resell on the streets of the city. When her friend died, Geurdie filled her role as the local Madam Sarah and became the sole parent for the three girls she left behind. In preparation for Wednesday’s community meal, Geurdie traveled to the market at Arcahaie where she normally buys produce from the peasant farmers.  This time, with help, she brought back enough to feed 150 people. As she used to accompany her mentor, she has several young women who help her. Through her, they meet the peasants, learn how to buy, transport, and sell produce. They joined Geurdie in the trip to Arcahaie and helped her to prepare the Kitchen’s first meal of rice, vegetables, and beef. Geurdie has cooked for large groups in the community before.

Waiting for the Kitchen to open.

In anticipation, the local people arrived at the Community Kitchen early to not miss out. Jhony and Baudelais had already listed the most vulnerable who had priority. They lined up to the left of the Kitchen entrance: pregnant women, children, the elderly, women, and the handicapped. On the right, the men waited their turn. At first, everyone was good-natured and calm, respecting the line-ups, laughing and joking. 

Arons and Odel organize the distribution.

Inside the Kitchen, members of the local committees organized the distribution of food. The Community Kitchen has open sides that welcome any current of air to pass through. However, the walls are covered with mosquito netting to ensure that the food inside remains untouched and that people may eat in the shade and at peace from flies. Jhony and Baudelais borrowed tables and dishes. Once the produce and transport is paid for, the community is equally living on borrowed time.

Chen grangou pa jwe.

The problem began when a group of approximately twenty boys from the neighbourhood arrived and insisted on their right to be served. For them, the notion that children, pregnant women, the elderly, and handicapped people deserved special attention was unacceptable. Meanwhile, those who had been waiting in line reacted to the challenge. Gone was the goodwill. Some would eat and some would not. Everyone wanted to be in the first group. A Haitian proverb describes the scene: chen grangou pa jwe – a hungry dog doesn’t feel like playing. Inside was calm; outside, the community spirit degenerated into a struggle for a plate of Geurdie’s food. People feared that what had seemed a sure thing only minutes before was now uncertain. They became impatient, believing that a few well-directed insults and complaints might secure them the meal that they needed.

One of the patrons.

The Kitchen was conceived to address the problem of hunger and malnutrition. Pregnant women and children are given priority. But everyone is hungry.

A father assures his child's health.

The elderly.

The disappointed - angry.

 The young men were only one of various problems that the Kitchen has wrought. Many residents had been  skeptical that anything would ever come of the Community Kitchen. The previous week, local people assembled at the Kitchen to have their photos taken to promote the initiative. It was through that appeal that CHAN became interested in the Kitchen. However, a number of people refused to be photographed with the others, scoffing at the conceit that some of their neighbours might succeed in realizing the Kitchen. Now that there was actually food being served, everyone wanted to benefit. But since the amount of food was limited, those who had supported the Kitchen from its inception were given priority. Having sewn the seeds, it was fitting that they should reap the rewards. As the line lengthened and the food ran out, people who had not eaten became angry. Even many of those who ate at the Kitchen grumbled that the initiative was of such short duration.

When the day was over, Geurdie, Jhony, and Baudelais were exhausted and proud. They had brought something of value to Simon and everyone knew it. But they also recognize that they have much reconciliation before them. The boys want to eat. The people who doubted that the Kitchen would ever serve food are still hungry. The problem is that an insufficient amount of food is serving to divide the community, rather than bring it together. The boys have threatened to destroy the Kitchen. Simon became a reflection of the world, where food is used to divide people. And so the people who are, literally, responsible are looking for ways to reconcile with those who feel excluded. Hungry people don’t feel like playing. Everyone is vulnerable to hunger. Everyone needs to be cared for.

What will happen if they bridge all the divisions in Simon? How will the adjacent neighbourhoods react should the Community Kitchen succeed in assuring that everyone in Simon is properly nourished? Will they declare war? On the other hand, it would be possible to imagine this intiative, controlled by Haitians as in Simon, reproduced throughout Cite Soleil and beyond. As the local groups understood when they devised the plan, the Kitchen promotes Haitian agriculture, offers real employment for the community at a number of levels, and addresses the need for food. If the will exists, their model could easily be expanded throughout the poor districts.

They Hate Us for Our Freedoms

Paul Jackson

On the six-month anniversary of the Haitian earthquake, Nigel Fisher, the Deputy Special Representative, Ad Interim, for the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) and its Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator, tried to answer a few questions from journalists after his prepared statement on the progress of the recovery effort. So momentous was the tragedy, such huge amounts of money collected, that the real beneficiaries of the catastrophe needed to say something. You can listen to the interview on the United Nations website.

We must put Fisher in his place. That is, we must place him within the events of the decade that led to his press conference.

In September 2001, George W Bush declared universal and never-ending war on those who “hate us for our freedoms.” The truth is buried within the lie. And the truth is simply that he was representing powers that are willing to kill to ensure that no community or population whose profits could accrue to their coffers be allowed the freedom to control their own lives.

We can now easily brush away the debris and see the truth. The debris in this case is not concrete, but words. When noble words and ideas are used to hide the truth, decent people must be vigilant. But honest people know that words have no inherent meaning. Words have meaning only in context. Actions have meaning. A quick survey of the recent histories of Canada, the United States, Afghanistan, and Haiti uncovers noble words and nasty actions.

Canadians are watching a vicious assault on their civil society. The state is withdrawing funding from community organizations that promote justice and equality. Many people are rethinking their relationship to the state. Some Canadians are falling into the same trap as their southern neighbours who had recently framed their agenda as a struggle against George W Bush. The fight is only against Harper insofar as he is currently representing those whose goal is the concentration of power. Canadians and Americans both have been naïve in their understanding of the state and their relationship to it.

The American state is currently the central tool through which global power is exercised. In October of 2001, it led us into war against those who, Bush claimed, “hate our freedoms.” The Empire required a state that could control Afghanistan in its interests. So it imposed one. However, throughout their history, the peoples of Afghanistan have always resisted the authority of the central government. Authority has always been exercised locally.

The media educated the populations of the belligerent NATO nations to ask all the wrong questions. Instead of discussing how it was that Afghanistan had never had a police force, we tracked the Afghan National Police in its progress towards becoming a viable institution. It always fell short for a number of reasons. The Americans took it over and have been using it to fight the insurgency. (Much as the police forces in Canada were unleashed against civil society during the G20 nightmare.) Accepting the terms set by Washington and the media, critics of the war asked the wrong questions about the ‘warlords.’ The word, apparently, doesn’t exist in Pashtu or Dari. There are terms that describe the types of leaders that have historically attracted the allegiance of local populations: the brave warrior and the wise emir are two such examples that have meaning in the Afghan context.

In sum, NATO states were not only ignorant about Afghan culture, politics, and society, but they spread their ignorance to Western populations that entered the debate already conquered by the interests of the powerful. The new Afghanistan was planned at the World Bank to be a ‘liberal open-market democracy.’ That is the standard against which all populations are measured. All NATO countries have plans for the integration of ‘failed states’ into the American-led Empire. Something called the United States Fund for Peace measures states to determine when they have ‘failed.’ The standard is a liberal democracy allied to the United States; however, dictatorships and feudal states are not judged to have failed unless America wants to invade them. The very term ‘failed state’ forces you to acknowledge the necessity and desirability of the state. However, the alternative to a failed state is not understood to be ‘no state,’ but rather a state that has the monopoly over the exercise of violence. Again, Canada proved that it is indeed a successful state during the G20 nadir.

NATO countries applied what they term the ‘whole of government’ approach to the remaking of Afghanistan. So, defence, diplomacy, and development were required to work together, with the military getting by far the largest percentage of the budget. The process insulted many personnel from NGOs who wanted to appear to be distinct from belligerent governments. The Afghan population came to see that the NGOs were an integral part of the occupation and so targeted them along with the military. Some, like Doctors Without Borders, withdrew, protesting that their work had been compromised and their personnel put at risk. Others remained and worked within the system. Some, like UNICEF Canada under Nigel Fisher, never denounced the invasion or occupation. Invade, occupy, and then educate the children. What moral authority could ever ground such an educational system?

Afghans have once again defeated the invaders, showing along the way why the tribal cultures value martial competence so highly. But what is clear is that ‘we’ – all of those who entered the terms of the debate as structured by the World Bank, NATO, the White House, and Pentagon – hated the freedoms exercised by Afghans. We didn’t hate any freedoms in particular, but rather their freedom from the control of our economy and our highly dysfunctional imaginations. While Afghans were fighting for their real freedom, Canadians and Americans who presumed, without evidence, that they were in control of their own states were being stripped of their basic rights. The Afghans have taught us a lesson in freedom. In fact, George W Bush and the people he represented hated Afghans for their freedoms, their independence of action. But now, even the slowest learners in North America are seeing that powerful interests control our states and they are bleeding us in a figurative sense just as Afghans shed real blood.

Meanwhile, the earthquake brought the same players down on Haiti. Same model. Same World Bank. Same Washington. Same Ottawa. This time, it was a humanitarian mission.

Two days after the earthquake, Nigel Fisher warned people to make sure they donated to the legitimate charities and humanitarian organizations like his UNICEF Canada. Clinton also reminded people that his Foundation was especially trustworthy. Now, they are working together to assure that Haiti not fail. Surely, you would have to be a terrorist or an Afghan warlord to want a state to fail. The problem is that, once again, the state doesn’t exist. For different reasons than Afghanistan, the Haitian state has no support among the population. Like the Afghan state that was imposed upon Afghans after the invasion, the part of the Haitian state that exercises power is a creation of Washington. Like Afghans, Haitians know they have a puppet government. However, what is obvious to everyone on the ground is unmentionable in the halls of power.

Fisher, like Clinton, has made himself useful to those who are trying to control the flow of goods, money, and information in the world. (They don’t go in the same direction.) Fisher has demonstrated extraordinary contempt for the poor he claims to be saving. He is the perfect appointment. “We are working with the Haitian government” is the mantra of all NGOs who want any part of Haiti. Only Haitians want nothing to do with ‘their’ government.

Like Afghanistan, there is an alternative: civil society, the same source of power that is ruthlessly under attack at the moment in Canada by the Harper government. The same promise of freedom that people in Afghanistan are wrenching from imperial hands. The same hope that burst with the Obama bubble. In Haiti, however, civil society is well developed and cannot be squashed by the state because it doesn’t rely on the state.

But Haitian civil society is under attack. Fisher claimed at the news conference that he had spoken with all of the major NGOs and they had agreed to follow government standards in their development work. For those who accept ‘the state’ without question, this is perhaps not a controversial statement. But the Haitian state cannot claim any legitimacy as long as popular parties are forbidden to participate in elections. Meanwhile, for those with marching orders from the neoliberal planners of the global economy, the process, seen in Afghanistan most recently, is to place a government in office and then guarantee it the monopoly over violence to protect itself from the people it is intended to control. That North Americans call that ‘democracy’ reveals how little meaning they attach to words.  In the emerging world order, Canada is increasingly accepting the role of training the police forces for states that have no popular support. It is likely that that explains why Prime Minister Harper spent one billion dollars at the G20 to show Canada’s partners its competence in policing its population.

Fisher says that the most important factor for Haiti to find a path towards sustainable development is to ensure “that every Haitian child receives a quality education. This will have ripple effects throughout Haitian society. The educated population will: be thoughtful and analytical; challenge political leaders to act in the best interests of all Haitians; transform the economy; build an equitable society; and educate and protect its own children. It’s a ‘virtuous cycle’ that will continue.”

This is a fabulous claim that ensures, instead, that UNICEF remains untouched by the politics of the world in which it operates, that it is helping to bring into existence. In his time in Afghanistan, Fisher made the same claim, formulated to appeal to an uncritical Western audience. It allows NGOs to never be accountable, for by the time the children are educated and jobless, UNICEF will be elsewhere, making the same claims in relation to other victimized populations. The question is what form education takes. Haitians already learn through apprenticeships the only trades that they have any hope of practising in Haiti. At the press conference, Fisher offered full support to the Interim Committee’s development plan. How much education does he want to offer children who will be working in assembly plants?

In fact, the real education must take place in the other direction. I invite Nigel Fisher to immerse himself in Cite Soleil society for a year. He will find that his analytical skills have been very weak indeed for they have overlooked the actual human beings in whose interests he claims to be acting. He says that a formal education will allow Haitians to challenge their political leaders. Only in ignorance of the recent history of Haiti available to all educated people could he make such claims.

It seems that Fisher learned somewhere that the only legitimate authority comes from up the socio-economic ladder. In his support for the plan tabled by the Interim Committee, he said: “We (international community, whether that’s donor governments, UN, major NGOs) we’re now working with those sectoral ministries to define hard targets – operational targets – which will allow that plan then to be measurable. I think in all the discussion of how progress has been achieved, we’re not going to be able to say anything unless we have hard targets. That’s what’s been done now. And the Prime Minister says he wants targets by the end of this year and by the end of next year so that we can really measure progress.”

That is precisely the thinking that has caused such a nightmare for the peoples of Afghanistan. Planners at the White House, Pentagon, World Bank, and NATO imagine that anything they can dream up in one world can then be implemented in another. Once the goals are in place, then all that’s left is to see whether we are achieving them. If not, change the game plan, the tactics. The goalposts cannot move, however, once the game is underway. Never mind what suffering. 

So, what does Fisher think about the people whose lives will be affected by those plans?  “The nutritional status of children and vulnerable groups, especially women, has not worsened in the months since the earthquake and in fact in comparison with some of the areas where people lived in greatest poverty, for example Cite de Soleil, [sic] we’ve seen in the camps around Cite de Soleil [sic] in fact an improvement in the nutritional status of children. ” Representatives of complicit NGOs always have a fact at hand, baiting the listeners to debate a detail.

In 2008, Fisher visited Cite Soleil. He claimed that, “The people here are condemned by internal neglect and international indifference.” At the time, that claim could only have made sense if he was speaking to the world populations, chastising them for allowing the American Empire to crush Cite Soleil’s civil society. Now, we see that his judgment that international indifference was responsible for Cite Soleil’s plight was based on an incredible ignorance of history. Indifference would have been a blessing!

Whether Fisher is actually very poorly educated or is blind to facts that don’t promote his career is not knowable from my position. However, the people assembling on any street in Cite Soleil can allow themselves the luxury of incisive analysis about Haitian and global affairs. That is a freedom that even the most downtrodden and dispossessed retain. People like Fisher and the representatives of NGOs that have decided to uncritically throw in their lot with the government controlled by foreign interests against Haitian civil society could easily analyze themselves right out of a job.

Best to not be too lucid about the past. Keep your eyes on the future. The future can be debated with no reference to the real world. It hasn’t arrived for verification. Perhaps that explains Fisher’s hodgepodge of facts contested by the journalists who tried to make him accountable as he claimed to be. There is a plan in the works, the details of which are sketchy. After its realization, as long as donors keep the funds flowing, Haiti will finally overcome its history of which not one of the planners seems to be even remotely aware.

The same interests are trying to gut Afghan, Haitian, Canadian, and American civil society. They hate us for our freedoms.