Editorial, HAITI HEARTQUAKE, in 15 January 2010 (Vol. 6, Part 1, No. 1) issue of LAW ANIMATED WORLD

HAITIAN HEARTQUAKE

The NEW YEAR has certainly not begun/augured well for us humans what with a terrible heartrending earthquake devastating the Caribbean country, Ayiti, on 12 January 2010 razing to ground most of its capital city and adjoining areas and taking toll of nearly two lakh lives and damaging crores of property. Already crippled by the aftereffects of a military takeover leading to the subsequent UN intervention to restore normalcy through MINUSTAH (United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti), this unfortunate country (of HDI ranking 149 in contrast to our India’s 134) has now become victim of a most horrible quake, may be a natural disaster or may be even man-made. The first American country to free itself by a slave rebellion in 1805 or so, and which later helped many other Latin American countries in their struggles for independence, Haiti itself became one of the worst victims of imperialist aggression and exploitation. Occupied by the American marines in 1915 for about two decades, since then it has become a de facto colony of America for all purposes. The 2004 coup was also said to have been instigated and aided by the American ruling clique and now the quake itself is said to have been caused by a ‘tectonic weapon’ if the flamboyant Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is to be believed to any extent. Apart from him, there are a number of conspiracy theorists in the US itself who do not discount such possibility. Global warming and disaster capitalism are also pointed to be the chief evils as also the evil consequences of HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) which, they say, could be used as directed-energy weapon, an earthquake induction device and/or for weather control, mind control, etc. All this, if likely, looks like some horror science fiction come true. Be that as it may, we can only agree with the Venezuelan representative’s declamation in the United Nations that “Haiti needed medicine and aid, not military intervention. No country should take advantage of a vulnerable situation to deploy military forces, especially when MINUSTAH was on the ground,” and we are gravely concerned about the thousands of American troops inducted there ostensibly for calamity relief but in effect to take complete control of that country’s administration bypassing the UN.§§§