Published in The Nation

In the wake of the earthquake that has killed more than 100,000 people in Haiti, the foreign ministers of several countries calling themselves the "Friends of Haiti" met on Monday in Montreal to discuss plans for "building a new Haiti." Participants in the Ministerial Preparatory Conference on Haiti, who included Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; representatives of international financial institutions including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund; and Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive came to what Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon, the conference chair, referred to as a "road map towards Haiti's reconstruction and development."

Published in the Hürriyet Daily News

One of the foremost critics of Israel’s Gaza policies turned her guns on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Monday for ignoring human rights violations both domestically and internationally.

Activist and journalist Naomi Klein criticized the Turkish government for ignoring the rights of its own Kurdish and Armenian population while voicing solidarity with the plight of Palestinians. She said it is easy to stand up for Palestinian rights in Turkey because it is “popular, populist.”

Speaking at a seminar at Istanbul’s Boğaziçi University where a part of a conference was held in memory of slain Turkish–Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, Klein talked about activities to boycott Israel in order to uphold the rights of Palestinians.

Just days after Naomi praised the International Monetary Fund for its historic advocacy of turning a $100 million emergency loan to Haiti into a grant, the institution seized up and began back-pedaling on debt relief. IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn clearly proposed converting the loan to a grant on January 20:

"The most important thing is that the IMF is now working with all donors to try to delete all the Haitian debt, including our new loan. If we succeed—and I'm sure we will succeed—even this loan will turn out to be finally a grant, because all the debt will have been deleted. And that's the very important thing for Haiti now."

Yet when he wrote of the loan just two days later in the Huffington Post, he dropped all the language of giving this emergency aid in grant form:

Everyone agrees that the Haiti earthquake is a serious situation. Serious enough for the US to send thousands of Marines, to take over the airport, to suspend Haiti's sovereignty and take over the operation. Serious enough to unify the bitter partisan divide and put Bush, Clinton, and Obama together to raise funds. Serious enough for benefit concerts and the invention of new forms of philanthropy, where people can donate through their cell phones. But the Haiti earthquake is apparently not all that serious:

1. It's not serious enough to give undocumented Haitians a full amnesty. Yes, it was serious enough to give them Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which they'd been asking for for years, so that they can send back money legally and so they're not in danger of being deported back to their re-devastated country. But they still have to pay $470 dollars for registering (every dollar of which could have gone to Haiti – which adds up to millions of dollars if more than a few thousand register and pay the fee), and after their 18 month grace period ends they will be in the system and easier to deport than they were before registering.

Published on Newsweek.com

Bottom feeders follow closely on the heels of disaster. After Hurricane Katrina, private security contractors landed in New Orleans, hired to guard against looters. After the Indian Ocean tsunami, governments in Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, and the Maldives pushed aside coastal villages to make way for resort developers. That kind of profiteering is standard fare. But is it organized? That's what author Naomi Klein says in her book The Shock Doctrine, arguing that "disaster capitalists" take advantage of post-crisis chaos to push through a set of free-market reforms that further their own interests, rather than those of the victims. Is that the case in Haiti right now, even as rescue operations are still underway? NEWSWEEK's Katie Paul chatted with Klein about what she—and the 20,000 people who have already joined the No Shock Doctrine for Haiti group on Facebook—are watching out for this time around. Excerpts:

Rachel Maddow discusses how the IMF's recent announcement that it will try to give grants to Haiti instead of loans is "good news in very dark days for the hope of Haiti's recovery." Please watch her terrific report:

Aid agencies have been accused of "jostling for position" and putting their own interests above those of the victims in the Haiti earthquake.

In a caustic editorial today, the respected medical journal, the Lancet, attacked the way charities and other non-governmental organisations have clamoured for attention in the wake of the disaster.

"NGOs are rightly mobilising, but also jostling for position, each claiming that they are doing the most for earthquake survivors," it said.

The Lancet did not name any aid agencies, many of which lost staff members in the disaster, but it questioned the way several have claimed to be "spearheading" relief efforts.

"As we only too clearly see, the situation in Haiti is chaotic, devastating, and anything but co-ordinated," it said.

The editorial argued that the response to the earthquake has highlighted questions about the competitive ethos of large aid agencies. The issue has emerged in past emergencies, including the Asian tsunami in 2004.

Soon after almost every disaster the crimes begin: ruthless, selfish, indifferent to human suffering, and generating far more suffering. The perpetrators go unpunished and live to commit further crimes against humanity. They care less for human life than for property. They act without regard for consequences.

I'm talking, of course, about those members of the mass media whose misrepresentation of what goes on in disaster often abets and justifies a second wave of disaster. I'm talking about the treatment of sufferers as criminals, both on the ground and in the news, and the endorsement of a shift of resources from rescue to property patrol. They still have blood on their hands from Hurricane Katrina, and they are staining themselves anew in Haiti.

Last Friday I wrote about the IMF's new $100 million loan to Haiti. I cited debt relief activists who told me that the new loan would be an extension of the IMF's existing loan of $165 million. This information was confirmed by the IMF's press release, which stated that "emergency financing would be provided as an augmentation to the existing IMF-supported arrangement with Haiti under the Extended Credit Facility [ECF]." The IMF's announcement provided no further information about conditions that may or may not be attached to the loan and made no mention of future debt relief for Haiti.

There is no relief for the people of Haiti, it seems, even in their hour of promised salvation. More than a week after the earthquake that may have killed 200,000 people, most Haitians have seen nothing of the armada of aid they have been promised by the outside world. Instead, while the US military has commandeered Port-au-Prince's ­airport to pour thousands of soldiers into the stricken Caribbean state, wounded and hungry survivors of the catastrophe have carried on dying.