CounterSpin

Chris Bernadel on Haiti

This week on CounterSpin:

U.S. corporate media’s story about Haiti is familiar. Haiti, according to various recent reports, has “whipped from one calamity to another.” The country is a “cataclysm of hunger and terror,” “teetering on the brink of collapse,” “spiraling deeper into chaos” or else “descending into gang-fueled anarchistic chaos.” It’s “become a dangerously rudderless country.” According to one Florida paper’s editorial, “Haiti’s unrest” is now “becoming our problem,” as Floridians and the U.S. “struggle to help people in Haiti, although history suggests there are no answers.”

According to The Washington Post, there is one answer. They made space for a former ambassador to explain that 20 years ago in Haiti, “the worst outcomes were avoided through decisive American intervention. Today’s crisis might require it as well.”

We talk about what has to change — including Western media presentations that ignore or erase even recent history — with Chris Bernadel, from the Black Alliance for Peace‘s Haiti/Americas Team and Haitian grassroots group Moleghaf.