3 killed in Haiti amid food riots, clashes

[struggle4progress]

rom the Associated Press
April 5, 2008

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI -- At least three people were killed and 25 injured in food riots and clashes with U.N. peacekeepers Friday, a mission spokeswoman and Haitian radio said.

A young man was shot in the head and killed during protests in southern Haiti. It was not immediately clear who shot him, though protesters blamed United Nations troops ...

Nine people were treated for bullet wounds, Boutaud said. A U.N. soldier was slightly injured ...

Food prices are rising worldwide but the problem hits hard in Haiti, where 80% of the population lives on less than $2 a day. Prices for rice, beans, fruit and condensed milk have gone up 50% from last year, and the cost of pasta has doubled.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-haiti5apr05,1,5805472.story


Food riots turn deadly in Haiti

At least four people were killed and 20 wounded when demonstrations against rising food prices turned into riots in southern Haiti, officials say ...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7331921.stm

[panAmerican]

1. There are calls by various civil society for strikes tomorrow

Things are really brutal in Haiti right now according to all my sources.

[struggle4progress]

2. Hispaniola is a textbook example of The Ownership Society:

starving masses on one-third of the island provide cheap labor for the plantation economy on the other two-thirds, the workers being easily deportable as "foreigners" and those born on the plantations being stateless persons

Two-thirds of the island is never in the news, while the other third frequently appears as "evidence" that the poor are ignorant and so corrupt people they cannot manage their own affairs

But when the poor third organizes to it own advantage, producing a functioning democracy and eliminating government-by-arms -- why, then, somehow troops are armed on the plantation side and march across the border to "restore order" while a superpower kidnaps the elected President and carries him off in the Central African Republic