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Russia’s Peskov: Crimea Not a Topic of Any Putin-Zelensky Meeting

Peskov Says Crimea Will Not Be the Topic of Any Putin-Zelensky Meeting

April 23 (EIRNS)–The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Crimea would not be on the agenda for any meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, as Crimea is not a Ukrainian matter. While a meeting between the two leaders is still on the agenda, there is as yet no venue. Zelensky proposed meeting Putin in the Donbas region of Ukraine. But Putin rejected the proposal and said that Zelensky should meet with the Donbas people, as Russia was not a party in that internal conflict in Ukraine. He suggested that Zelensky come to Moscow to meet to discuss bilateral relations, but Crimea is not on the table.


Hamilton, China, and LaRouche: Economic Development Is an Inalienable Right

Those familiar with the fifty-plus-year forecasting practice and record of economist and statesman Lyndon LaRouche will perhaps recognize the deeper significance of the following statement, a significance probably unknown to the writer himself. In a London Guardian October 1 op-ed entitled “America faces supply-chain disruption and shortages. Here’s why,” author Matt Stoller says: “… what we’re experiencing is also the net result of decades of policy choices starting in the 1970s that emphasized consumer sovereignty over citizenship. The consolidation of power into the hands of private equity financiers and monopolists over the last four decades has left us uniquely unprepared to manage a supply shock. Our hyper-efficient globalized supply chain, once romanticized by men like Tom Friedman in The World Is Flat, is the problem. Like the financial system before the 2008 crash, this kind of economic order hides its fragility. It seems to work quite well, until it doesn’t.”

It is not enough to point out that what seems to be a sudden seizing up of the trans-Atlantic goods-distribution system is not the product of the Covid pandemic of the past 20 months, but something more “long-range.” History is never “objective” in that way. What was the agency that was at work here? Thirty-five years ago today, an “event” occurred that, if omitted from current history, renders it impossible to fully understand what is happening now.

THE PRICE FOR CHANGING HISTORY

Lyndon LaRouche, in 2004, in a report titled “The Night They Came to Kill Me” explained the true, “subjective” nature of that “objective” trans-Atlantic-wide economic devolution. “On October 6, 1986, a virtual army of more than four hundred armed personnel descended upon the town of Leesburg, Virginia, for a raid on the offices of EIR and its associates, and also deployed for another, darker mission. The premises at which I was residing at that time were surrounded by an armed force, while aircraft, armored vehicles, and other personnel waited for the order to move in shooting. Fortunately, the killing did not happen, because someone with higher authority than the Justice Department Criminal Division head William Weld, ordered the attack on me called off. The forces readied to move in on me, my wife, and a number of my associates, were pulled back in the morning……

“The 1973 campaign for my ‘elimination,’ the near-slaughter of Oct. 6-7, 1986, and the stubborn effort to exclude me from the debates now (in 2004), are each and all products of the same issue of my fight against the effort of certain liberal economists, and others, to put the world as a whole under the thumb of the policies of former Nazi Economics Minister Hjalmar Schacht.

“The ultimate origin of these and related actions is not the U.S. Department of Justice, but a much higher authority than the U.S. government, the same assortment of Venetian-style international financier-oligarchical interests, and their associated law firms, which unleashed the wave of fascist dictatorships in continental Europe over the interval 1922-1945. The common feature of those international financier interests, then, back during 1922-1945, and today, is their present commitment to imposing Schachtian economics upon both the U.S.A. itself, and also on the world at large…

“The shift of the U.S. and British economies away from the U.S. ‘s leading role as the world’s greatest producer nation, toward a pro-Schachtian, ’post- industrial’ utopianism, was the hall- mark of the 1966-1968 Nixon campaign for the Presidency. The follies of this ‘post-industrial’ shift into wild-eyed monetarism, led the U.S. government to the point, that it must abandon its foolish post-Kennedy economic and cultural policies, or make exactly the choice I had warned that I feared they would make. Nixon’s decision of August 15, 1971 made the march in the direction of ruin and fascist-like dictatorship inevitable.”

Today, as in 1986 and 2004, there are two systems of choice before the world. There is the system of “Reesian choices,” named after the Tavistock Institute’s John Rawlings Rees, typified by the “development policies”—policies of financial looting—of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) toward the continent of Africa ever since the period after JFK’s assassination. Then there is the “American System” of “Hamiltonian” choices, of what has recently been called “win-win cooperation” by the nation of China. For example, when China’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Geng Shuang, recently told that body that the international community should “spare no effort in humanitarian assistance and post-disaster reconstruction” toward Haiti, he opened a “strategic flank in the mind,” that is a far more powerful idea than that of the self-doomed “Operation Orcus/Global Britain” military adventure hurtling to its strategic doom in the trans-Pacific theater.

COMPLETING HAMILTON’S UNFINISHED “HAITI MISSION”

The United States used to think that way. In 1861, the United States, under Abraham Lincoln, dispatched Ambassador Anson Burlingame as diplomatic emissary to a China then subjugated by the British Empire through the Second Opium War. Today, in 2021, China attempts to reach a United States whose leadership and institutional structure, as well as cultural institutions, have now also been subjugated, and largely devastated by the same “Opium War” method—though this time, not external force, but seduction through Winston Churchill’s “Empire of the Mind” was used. The United States was induced, through the Tavistock Institute and its Frankfurt School subsidiary, to destroy itself, to de-industrialize itself, to reject scientific progress itself, and, now, to depopulate itself. The just-announced proposal, however, for a joint, international mission to defend the sovereignty of the nation of Haiti from the international drug mafias that now subjugate it, by demonstrating, through construction of ports, rail, and power, including nuclear and thermonuclear power, that “economic development is a human right,” if accepted, can bring the United States itself back to its senses.

The LaRouche proposal for the emergency reconstruction of Haiti, introducing the higher-order concept of development corridors and an ” economic platform” into one of the poorest areas of the world, provides, as with Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s Afghanistan proposal, and especially if successfully advocated by a group of Americans representing the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites, including those that hail from Haiti, a way for America to return to its previous Hamilton/Lincoln/Roosevelt outlook, that Frederick Douglass, America’s ambassador to Haiti, represented in his living person.

The uncorrected flaw in the American Revolution was, as all know, the inability to resolve the Africa chattel slavery matter at the beginning of the creaton of the nation, largely because of the influence of John Locke and his Royal Africa Company on the constitution of South Carolina, and other Southern states. But slavery was not the desired system, originally, even in the Southern colonies. Auguste Levasseur, Secretary to Lafayette, recounted in 1824:

“In about the year 1680, the General Assembly of the State of Virginia requested of the parent state that it finally put an end to this commerce in human flesh, infamous and unnecessary in the future, since now the population was numerous enough and active enough to cultivate a land that required only the lightest work to reward the tiller richly. Other Colonies repeated this cry of justice and philanthropy, but the parent country was callous and responded only by this atrocious resolution of Parliament: The importation of Slaves in America is too lucrative for the Colonies to be able to insist that England renounce it forever. This response was accompanied by threats to which it was necessary to succumb since they were in no condition to resist them. Nonetheless, the General Assembly renewed several times its demand….”

Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton’s support for the Haitian Revolution, and his co-authorship of Haiti’s Constitution, flowed from his notion of “Artificial labor” as expressed in his 1790 Report on the Subject of Manufactures. Is Thomas Jefferson’s then-opposition to Haiti’s self-government consistent with the now-present United States policy, itself opposite to that of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, of allowing, tolerating, and in effect aiding in the never-ending torture of that population, through refusing to take down the “Dope Inc.” financial oligarchy that dominates it as surely as did the slave-masters of 1791? China, which has, since the Bandung conference of 1955, and now even despite the fact that it is not diplomatically recognized by the government of Haiti, insisted that economic development is a human right for that nation. It has now posed to the entire international community that the same problem China has successfully tackled and solved internally—the eradication of poverty—be solved worldwide. The Global Development Initiative premiered by Xi Jinping at this United Nations session has now placed “economic development as a human right” on the world table. Executive Intelligence Review has answered the United Nations, and the world, by providing a policy orientation for the now-distracted United States. The plan for Haiti invokes, implicitly, FDR’s Four Freedoms, and, explicitly, LaRouche’s Four Economic Laws, to chart a way forward, not only for Haiti, not only for the Caribbean, but by means of eradicating poverty through economic cooperation, for “everywhere in the world.”

“YOUR DEATH WILL SAVE THE PLANET”

There is only one problem. The financial neo-Malthusians intend to use the illiterate argument that “natural law” is above human rights, to introduce what Fred Wills used to call “the doctrine of regrettable necessity” as the means to argue that billions will have to go away to save the planet. The bill is beginning to come in for this sophistry, in astronomical gas and electricity prices, hyperinflation, supply chain breakdowns, cuts in living standards, and drops in life expectancy that, while blamed on the coronavirus pandemic, preceded it. As stated by Klaus Schwab in the book Stakeholder Capitalism:” The same force that helps people escape from poverty and lead a decent life is the one that is destroying the livability of our planet for future generations. The emissions that lead to climate change are not just the result of a selfish generation of industrialists or western baby boomers. They are the consequence of the desire to create a better future for oneself.”

Except that Schwab isn’t actually referring in this passage to “western baby boomers,” but to both the Chinese policies for the development of African nations, and the desire of African nations to create a better future. As the Club of Rome’s Alexander King wrote: “The real enemy, then, is humanity itself.” Especially the “high birth rate” in Africa—too many African “carbon footprints.” So, regrettably, Africans must be reduced in their numbers, by any means necessary, in defense of natural law.

China’s calling the attention of the world to the crisis in Haiti at the United Nations, seen from the standpoint of the proposal in Executive Intelligence Review written by Richard Freeman and Cynthia Rush, places the United States in the position to choose, not the Tavistock choice method, but the “win-win” method which was always the essential characteristic of the American System which, as Henry Carey put it, “is the only one ever devised the tendency of which was that of elevating vehicle equalizing the condition of man throughout the world.”


Taliban Want Relations with Regional Nations

Taliban Want Relations with Regional Nations

Sep. 6 (EIRNS) — TASS, citing Al Jazeera, reported this morning that the Taliban intend to invite a number of foreign countries to be present at the installation of the new government that they expect to announce within the next few days. “We have sent invitations to Turkey, China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan and Qatar to take part in the [ceremony] of announcing [the composition of the new Afghan] government,” said an unnamed Taliban representative.

Mohammad Akbar Agha, a former Taliban field commander and now the leader of Afghanistan’s High Council of Salvation, told TASS yesterday that the Taliban is very interested in establishing relations with Russia, Iran and Pakistan. “We should establish broad relations with Moscow, since it is in the interests of both the Taliban and Russia,” he said. “Iran and Pakistan are also countries we want to establish relations with. They need us and we need them.”

Agha also said that the Taliban have no objections against having a U.S. embassy in Kabul but Washington is afraid of it. “Before the United States’ invasion of Afghanistan there was a possibility to have good relations with Washington. But after their invasion and their crimes … relations have worsened,” he said. Agha said that “there are chances that [diplomatic] relations between the United States and the Taliban will be established. I think the Taliban will not be against opening the U.S. embassy in Afghanistan. But the United States is afraid of the current situation in the country and most likely there will be no embassy for some time,” he said.


China, Russia UN Envoys Call for International Community To Assist Haiti

It is notable, that at yesterday’s U.N. Security Council debate on Haiti, it was left to the representatives of China and Russia to at least raise Haiti’s desperate need for development and reconstruction, beyond merely relief aid.

All representatives who spoke, pointed to the need for Haitians to come together to resolve the nation’s government and institutional crisis, and spoke of elections, and of the terrible security problem of gangs and drugs that must be addressed. But without moving beyond meager humanitarian relief efforts, to international assistance to allow Haiti to undertake the kind of full-scale reconstruction program which the Schiller Institute is proposing, no political solution is possible.

Geng Shuang, Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN of China, called on the international community to step up and help Haiti recover, and “spare no effort in humanitarian assistance and post-disaster reconstruction…. China calls on the international community to respond actively to the UN humanitarian emergency appeals totaling about $187 million, and urges the Haitian government to work closely with the UN system to ensure that supplies reach people most in need and to avoid waste and embezzlement,” he said.

Geng suggested that a change in strategy is needed, pointing to the failure of the humanitarian strategy towards the country, in which the 14.7 billion U.S. dollars spent since 2010 “have yet to deliver the expected results…. The international community’s long-standing assistance model that can be compared to blood transfusion and oxygen supply to Haiti has proven to be neither markedly effective nor sustainable…. We are ready to join the rest of the Council members to address the systemic and operational impediments to peace and development in Haiti, and to consider adopting a novel approach to help Haiti come out of its plight,” he said.

Russian First Deputy Permanent Representative Dmitry Polyanskiy spoke of the “urgent need to address issues that are inevitable to all States, among them combating unemployment and improving overall standards of living…. We cannot but be appalled by the information contained in the report from the World Bank that in 2021, 60% of Haitians will fall under the poverty threshold…. Clearly, such a dire situation in this insular country requires consolidated international support, first and foremost, from regional neighbors.”

Many representatives could not fail to reference the shocking decision to forcibly return to Haiti thousands of “people who cobbled together their last money to leave the country in search of better lives for their children,” as Polyanskiy—but not only he—put it. On that subject, U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield was silent.


Russia Revives Witte Plan for Siberian Development

Russia Revives Witte Plan for Siberian Development

Sep. 6 (EIRNS) — Russia seems prepared to resurrect the Sergei Witte plan for the economic development of Siberia and launch a new program for Siberian development with a proposal by Minister of Defense Gen. Sergei Shoigu, himself a Siberian, for building a new city between the Siberian cities of Krasnoyarsk and Bratsk. This would create the type of city-clusters which have proven so successful in China. Shoigu had earlier put forward a proposal for moving the Russian capital from Moscow to somewhere in Siberia. Shoigu has also proposed giving “Siberian mortgage loans” to settlers willing to move to the new city. He proposes building three to five new cities in Siberia. His proposal has been accepted by the Kremlin and he has been assigned to work out a plan of development.


Suicide Watch: Day One of Biden’s Climate Summit

Suicide Watch: Day One of Biden’s Leaders Summit on Climate

April 22, 2021 (EIRNS)–Forty government heads of state and dozens of other leaders of institutions gathered (virtually) today to sing the praises of Joe Biden (“Joe” to many of them) for “bringing America back,” as most of them said — perhaps best expressed by the UK’s Alok Shama, the President of the COP 26 event planned for November in Glasgow: “We welcome America back into the fold,” clearly meaning the Malthusian death cult known as the British Empire. The meeting was chaired by climate fanatics Joe Biden, Antony Blinken and John Kerry.

There was a sharp distinction between the presentations of the leaders of the western world, and those of Russia, China, Mexico, South Africa, and some (but only some) other leaders from the Global South. While Biden, Macron, Merkel, Trudeau, Draghi, et al. described the so-called “climate crisis” as the greatest existential crisis facing mankind today, they emphasized that {all countries} must join in the suicide pact of eliminating fossil fuels and shutting down major portions of industry and agriculture to save Mother Earth from the non-existent danger of carbon dioxide. 

But the West no longer can dictate to the nations still guided by reason, rather than by Chicken Little’s screaming, ‘the sky is falling.’ 

Xi Jinping spoke poetically about the harmony and balance between man and nature, but added that it must follow a “people-centered approach,” focusing on those “longing for a better life.” We must follow the UN-centered multi-nationalism (i.e., not the artificial “rules-based order” made up by the imperial powers). Most importantly, he and many others emphasized the “common but differentiated responsibilities” between the advanced sector and the developing sector, insisting that the concerns of the developing countries must be accommodated. It is of note that climate czar John Kerry, speaking on Wednesday, called on China to give up its intention to allow coal-fired energy production to “peak” only in the 2030s. Xi did not obey, stating that they would continue producing coal-fired plants, as presented in the 14th Five Year Plan. That plan made clear that moving beyond coal depends on expanding nuclear and fusion power.

Vladimir Putin also insisted on UN-centered policies. He explained that Russia had reduced carbon emissions by half since the 1990s (like China, Russia has a serious real pollution problem, which they are resolving, with the side-effect of reducing carbon emissions). He said Russia is restructuring its energy and industrial sectors, focusing on nuclear power (he reminded the world that there are no carbon emissions from nuclear), as well as petro-gas and hydrogen. He noted that Russia’s ecosystem absorbs 2.5 billion tons of CO2 per year. He closed by insisting that global development must “not only be green, but also sustainable,” by fighting poverty and closing the gap between rich and poor. Nary a word about solar or wind.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) began by stating that Mexico had recently discovered three hydrocarbon deposits, all of which, he said, would be used to meet domestic demand. No longer, he said, would Mexico sell crude oil and import gasoline. Hydro plant turbines were being modernized to produce more electricity at less cost. Vast reforestation was taking place — 700 million trees, heading for a billion, and Mexico would help reforestation in the triangle countries to the south. He offered to advise the US on this successful program. He also called on the US to treat migrants as “exceptional people” who are willing to work hard, and who should have a path to citizenship if they desire. The State Department had warned AMLO in advance that the issue of migration should not be raised in the context of the environment — they are two totally different matters — but he did anyway. 

Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne, interestingly, barely mentioned climate, but focused on the financial disaster which, due to the pandemic, is striking countries like his dependent on tourism, and demanded that the nation’s debt must be forgiven or reorganized — it simply cannot be paid. He praised the fact that not only the US, but also China, were setting the pace on the climate issue. 

The session was ended by 19-year-old Xiye Bastida, a Mexican version of Greta Thunberg (who is from Fridays for the Future and was busy testifying at the US Congress), ranting and lecturing the evil white folk in the Global North who caused all the problems, and must now take direction from the brainwashed children. Blinken spent several minutes praising her as one of the “leaders of the future” who are dedicated to saving us from our folly. Xiye had been scheduled to speak in the session following AMLO’s, but she was moved up to provide a direct rejoinder to AMLO, and build her up as an international figure. One pro AMLO YouTube program, Antonio Villegas’s Guacamole News, reported on the incident: “Biden Ambushes AMLO at the Summit! They Create a Mexican Greta. She Already Attacked Him. From the Soros Group.” According to Villegas, Xiye insisted that the world has to recognize that we are at the end of the era of fossil fuels.  

The rest of the day included a session on Green Finance genocide with the normal suspects (Yellen, Georgieva, etc.), and another on Green Defense genocide (Sec. Austin, DNI Avril Haines, Sec. Ben Wallace, NATO’s Jens Stoltenberg, etc.). Climate is the center of all things, they all agreed, and the world must bow down or die. 

Friday is more of the same, ending with Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates.


UN Agencies Warn Again: Afghan Children Face “Acute Malnutrition” and Death

After a visit to Herat, Afghanistan, the UNICEF and World Food Program Representatives to Afghanistan, Hervé Ludovic De Lys and Mary-Ellen McGroarty, respectively, warned that one half of Afghanistan’s children under five years old —an estimated 3.2 million children— are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition by the end of the year, and at least a million of them are at risk of dying, should they not get immediate treatment.

The WFP estimates that 95% of households in Afghanistan are not eating enough food, and the two UN agencies are now adding 100 more mobile health and nutrition teams, to the 168 already operating in hard-to-reach areas. UNICEF rep De Lys warned that “the nutritional health of mothers and their children is getting worse by the day…. Children are getting sicker and their families are less and less able to get them the treatment they need. Rapidly spreading outbreaks of measles and acute watery diarrhoea will only exacerbate the situation.”

WFP’s McGroarty reiterated: “Unless we intervene now, malnutrition will only become more severe. The international community must release the funds they pledged weeks ago, or the impact could be irreversible.”


Bush-leaguers Warn U.S. Would Lose a War with China Over Taiwan

Bush-leaguers Warn U.S. Would Lose a War with China Over Taiwan

April 22, 2021 (EIRNS)–Two leading members of the CFR from the Bush administrations, Robert Blackwill and Philip Zelikow, have released a document under the title “The United States, China, and Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War,” calling for the U.S. to stand firmly behind Taiwan against “Chinese aggression,” but also warning that the U.S. can not win a war with China. The CFR blurb promoting the report quotes the report: “We do not think it is politically or militarily realistic to count on a U.S. military defeat of various kinds of Chinese assaults on Taiwan, uncoordinated with allies. Nor is it realistic to presume that, after such a frustrating clash, the United States would or should simply escalate to some sort of wide-scale war against China with comprehensive blockades or strikes against targets on the Chinese mainland.”

They state that Taiwan ”is becoming the most dangerous flash point in the world for a possible war that involves the United States, China, and probably other major powers.” They express a level of panic that the U.S. can no longer dictate global policy, and their proposals for U.S. actions show significant desperation. The U.S., they say, should: “affirm that it is not trying to change Taiwan’s status; work with its allies, especially Japan, to prepare new plans that could challenge Chinese military moves against Taiwan and help Taiwan defend itself, yet put the burden of widening a war on China; and visibly plan, beforehand, for the disruption and mobilization that could follow a wider war, but without assuming that such a war would or should escalate to the Chinese, Japanese, or American homelands.”

They conclude: “The horrendous global consequences of a war between the United States and China, most likely over Taiwan, should preoccupy the Biden team, beginning with the president.”


China, Cuba Collaborate To Create a New, More Complex ‘Pan Corona’ Vaccine

China and Cuba Collaborate To Create a New, More Complex ‘Pan Corona’ Vaccine

April 7 (EIRNS)—Cuba’s Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering Center (CIBG) is collaborating with China’s Joint Biotechnology Innovation Center based in Yongzhou, Hunan province, to produce a new vaccine, named Pan-Corona, to combat the SARS-CoV-2 virus, CubaDebate (against Media Terrorism) news site reported April 6. The vaccine being developed is described as a broad-spectrum one that would be effective against many different strains of the virus. CIBG’s director of biomedical sciences Dr. Gerardo Guillén explained that while the new vaccines shouldn’t be considered a “super vaccine,” it is definitely more complex than existing ones “because it’s more difficult to protect against different strains of the coronavirus which are not yet known,” Xinhua reported him as saying March 26.

China and Cuba have collaborated for two decades and have established five joint biotechnology companies. With China, Dr. Guillén told Xinhua, “we have scientific capabilities, equipment, logistics and resources, all based on the magnificent relations of friendship and hard work which really makes scientific development possible.” Cuba brings to bear its own advanced biomedical and biotechnological capabilities developed over decades, born out of necessity because of the economic blockade opposed on the country in 1962 which often made acquisition of medical supplies and equipment impossible. Also of interest is CubaDebate’s report that for 26 years, Cuba has received 10 gold medals from the World Intellectual Property Organization, as it has exported its biomedical products to 49 countries.

With five coronavirus vaccines in development, two of which, Soberana 2 and Abdala, are in Phase 3 clinical trials, Cuba is already planning to make them available to developing countries that cannot afford the prices charged by large pharmaceutical companies. Outside of Cuba, volunteers in Iran and Venezuela are participating in Soberana 2’s clinical trials, but other countries—Mexico, Argentina, Vietnam, Pakistan, India and the African Union (representing 55 countries)—have already expressed interest in acquiring the Soberana 2 and the other Cuban vaccines once trials are concluded. Cuba sets variable prices on its vaccines, depending on individual countries’ ability to pay.


Hunger, Sanitation, COVID–Top Concerns in Haiti

Sept. 1 (EIRNS)—A focus of humanitarian aid to Haiti right now is to get food, water, tarps, tents and medical supplies into those remote rural areas in the mountainous Southern peninsula, only accessible by helicopter. Partnering with USAID or with other Haitian or foreign charities, eight military aircraft from the U.S. Southern Command are carrying supplies to these small communities to meet their immediate needs and stock them with supplies to face the months ahead. Multiple trips are made daily from the Port-au-Prince airport. Residents of these communities have lost everything– crops, livestock and even the ability to leave, as roads have been destroyed by the earthquake or mudslides caused by Tropical Storm Grace.

Food is urgently needed. According to the World Food Program, in the three most severely-affected departments, Sud, Grand’Anse and Nippes, the number of people in need of urgent food assistance has increased by one-third since the quake, from 138,000 to 215,000. A year ago, the UN had warned that 4.4 million Haitians (42% of the population) faced acute food insecurity; and the country ranked 104th out of 107 on the Global Hunger Index. Now, Lola Castro, WFP’s regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean, said in a statement that “the earthquake rattled people who were already struggling to feed their families. The compound effects of multiple crises are devastating communities in the south faced with some of the highest levels of food insecurity in the country,” News Americas reported her saying Aug. 30.

The WFP is committed to providing food, shelter and medical aid to 215,000 people in the three southern departments—although the need extends well beyond those three. The UN’s Office of the Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has launched an appeal for $187.3 million in order to reach 500,000 affected people, although the agency’s Aug. 31 report indicated that at least 650,000 are in need of emergency humanitarian assistance. The World Bank’s sustainable development and infrastructure program did an initial damage assessment of $1 billion but this is expected to increase with more extensive assessments.

In its Aug. 31 report, OCHA also pointed to the growing risk of a major COVID-19 outbreak. Such preventative measures as mask wearing and social distancing are “compromised due to the current operational context,” OCHA notes, adding that less than 1% of Haiti’s 11 million inhabitants has been vaccinated. Nor are there vaccines! The country has received only 500,000 doses through the COVAX facility. PPE is scarce. Poverty, poor sanitation, lack of clean water and the fact that people are gathering in close quarters seeking food assistance and shelter are all risk factors. Argentina’s Telam news agency quoted OCHA warning that the possibility of “new and more contagious and dangerous variants reaching the island is particularly worrisome during the weeks and months following the earthquake as the country’s healthcare system lacks the ability to respond to a COVID outbreak.” Detailed OCHA fact sheet is here.


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