Disappeared News

by Larry Geller

“I guess for America's rulers a new pantsuit is more valuable than the lives of poor, Black Haitians.”

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Another article from CommonDreams.org. This one is about how after diverting aid flights away from Haiti’s airport for Hillary Clinton’s photo-op, the US military did it again so she could have a new outfit flown in.

No, I’m not going to snip, go read this first-hand report:

Occupation in Humanitarian Clothing, by Jesse Hagopian (1/24/2010).

Doctors Without Borders also complained about their flights being diverted or delayed. One of their planes carrying 12 tons of medical supplies was turned away three times from Port-au-Prince airport. One of the diverted flights carried the first part of a shipment of inflatable field hospitals, including two operating theaters, an ICU, 100 beds, an emergency room and equipment for sterilizing material (according to the second link above).

This is a video clip from the website of Doctors Without Borders. It’s not a very exciting video, it just illustrates the grunt work that has to be done to set up to save lives. This is what the US military occupation was delaying. I believe this video was intended as background for other reporting.

 

Disappeared News

The graphic scenes of death and destruction have largely not appeared in US coverage, though the rest of the world got the picture.

Just as the rapid response from China and even Iceland was effectively disappeared, so also is news of these flight diversions by the US military. It seems there is also another logistics problem, armies of journalists tying up resources as they fly into Haiti to set up cameras. Priority should go to relief supplies, equipment and personnel, not to 75-person press teams.

Why not some honest reporting from a small pool of reporters, particularly when the American news that comes out is so slanted?