Tangle - The violence in Haiti.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Breaking news happens anywhere, anytime. Police have warned the protesters repeatedly, get back. CBC News brings the story to you as it happens. Hundreds of wildfires are burning. Be the first to know what's going on and what that means for you and for Canadians. This situation has changed very quickly. Helping make sense of the world when it matters most. Stay in the know. CBC News.

Starting point is 00:00:29 Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to

Starting point is 00:01:05 your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of Isaac's take. I'm your host for today, John Law, and today we're going to be talking about the violence in Haiti. We're going to be

Starting point is 00:02:03 discussing the current situation going on there, and then bringing you views from the right and the left, as well as some international takes today as well. Before we get started, a couple of quick notes. First, we sold out our general admission tickets again for our live event on April 17th in New York City, but a limited number of VIP tickets remain. The VIP experience gets you a piece of Tangle Live merch, a small group discussion with Isaac after the show, and one of the best seats in the house. A few of the Tangle team members will be there as well.

Starting point is 00:02:36 We'd all love to see you out there. So please, if you haven't already, get your tickets before those sell out too. Second, if you haven't already, go and take a listen to our premiere episode of our new podcast series, The Undecideds. We are following five individuals from across the country as they follow the news and the facts and listen and make their decision on who they're going to ultimately vote for come November. All right,

Starting point is 00:03:01 with that out of the way, let's jump into our quick hits. First up, the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore collapsed early this morning after it was struck by a large cargo vessel. A search effort is underway to find six construction workers who were on the bridge when it was hit. Number two, the judge presiding over Donald Trump's hush money case in New York City scheduled the trial to begin on April 15th, denying multiple appeals from Trump's attorneys to delay the start of the trial. Separately, a New York appeals court said it would pause the enforcement of the $464 million judgment in the fraud case against Trump and the Trump Organization if they post $175 million of bond within 10 days. Number three, the Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments today to decide whether to

Starting point is 00:03:56 restrict access to mefapristone, a widely used abortion drug. Number four, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a law that would prohibit anyone 14 years old or younger from having a social media account. And number five, the U.S. Department of Justice charged seven hackers it alleges have worked on behalf of the Chinese government to target thousands of U.S. and international individuals and companies. in haiti armed gangs have escalated their violence rampaging through upscale neighborhoods of the capital yesterday gunmen looted homes witnesses reported seeing at least a dozen bodies lying in the streets there haiti's power company said four substations were also attacked and vandalized. That left many parts of the capital in the dark. Meantime, the State Department says that Haiti is close to naming a transitional governing council to confront this crisis so the embattled prime minister can step down. As Port-au-Prince falls further into chaos,

Starting point is 00:05:02 evacuations in Haiti are expanding. Haiti's Sunrise Airways now selling tickets on flights from Cape Haitian to Miami. France's foreign minister says their government is organizing chartered flights out for French nationals. And the U.S. State Department continues to evacuate Americans. Over the past week, more than 230 U.S. citizens have been evacuated from Haiti as a gang-led rebellion continues to surge through the Caribbean nation. In a briefing last Monday, March 18th, U.S. State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel called the situation one of the most dire humanitarian situations in the world, saying that gang violence

Starting point is 00:05:45 continues to make the security situation in Haiti untenable, and it is a region that demands our attention. On Sunday, 30 U.S. citizens were evacuated from Haiti to Miami aboard a charter flight. Over 1,600 Americans have filled out crisis intake forms at the U.S. Embassy in Haiti. To take a look back, on the evening of March 3rd, gangs in Haiti stormed a major prison in the capital of Port-au-Prince, freeing 3,700 inmates and leading the government to declare a state of emergency. The prison attacks followed calls by gang leader Jimmy Chirizier to overthrow President Ariel Henry, who came to office shortly after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July of 2021. Henry had pledged to step down by early February 2024, but later said that security

Starting point is 00:06:33 must be re-established before Haiti could hold free and fair elections. The clashes began while Henry was in Kenya finalizing the details of a UN-sponsored mission to contract 1,000 police officers to help Haiti's security situation. Gang violence has led to the displacement of over 362,000 people in recent years and over 15,000 people since February, according to UN estimates. Gangs have continued to launch attacks across the nation's capital, but violence has eased imminently since Henri announced he intends to step down. Here's a little bit of history. The U.S. and Haiti have a centuries-old relationship. After enslaved Haitians rebelled against their French rulers in the late 18th century, the largest successful slave revolt in history, Haiti was isolated by

Starting point is 00:07:19 the U.S. on the world stage while enduring harsh economic conditions imposed by President Thomas Jefferson. Later, in 1915, the U.S. sent troops into Haiti following the assassination of President Jean Villebron-Guillaume Sam. The occupation lasted from 1915 until 1934, and the U.S. continued to control Haiti's public finances until 1947. U.S. Marines were also sent into Haiti in the aftermath of the violent coup in 2004. More recently, the U.S. has attempted to support Haiti in the wake of multiple natural disasters, though those efforts have yielded mixed results. After a catastrophic earthquake in 2010, the American Red Cross raised nearly $500 million to help Haiti rebuild, but later investigations found that the vast majority of the money went unaccounted for

Starting point is 00:08:09 or was appropriated for internal use. So what now? CARICOM, a transnational trade group of Caribbean nations, has been meeting with the officials from France, Canada, and the United States to establish a nine-member transitional council to choose Haiti's next leader. The council's formation has been delayed by continued violence in Haiti, including death threats to party leaders who would compromise the council. Last week, the State Department circulated a document among lawmakers outlining the operation of a multinational security mission

Starting point is 00:08:41 to Haiti. However, the plan does not define key details of the potential operation, including how international forces would help local police quell gangs. Further, Republican lawmakers have signaled they are unlikely to support congressional funding for the force until a more complete plan is produced. The human suffering and devolving crisis in Haiti is tragic, Senator Jim Risch said in a joint statement with Representative Michael McCaul last week. Yet after years of discussions, repeated requests for information, and providing partial funding to help them plan, the administration only this afternoon sent us a rough plan to address this crisis. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called on Republican leaders to release $50 million in security support for Haiti. The situation on the ground in Haiti has rapidly deteriorated.

Starting point is 00:09:30 While House Republicans have refused to deliver the resources necessary to carry out this mission, Jeffries said, Today, we are going to explore arguments about what role the U.S. should play in addressing Haiti's current crisis, with perspectives from the right, left, and abroad, and then Isaac's take. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. Let's start with what the right is saying. The right favors a non-interventionalist approach to the crisis, suggesting Biden's current plan will only worsen the situation. Others point to the history of U.S.-Haiti relations as evidence that further American involvement won't help the

Starting point is 00:10:17 Haitian people. In Fox News, Andres Martinez Fernandez wrote, Biden is desperate to help Haiti, but he's doing it all wrong. After consistently failing to address the years-long crisis that was clearly in motion, Democrats' slapdash effort to do something in Haiti is now gaining steam in Washington and threatens to not only deepen the crisis in the Caribbean, but also to entrench the United States in yet another dangerous international quagmire, Martinez Fernandez said. It is perhaps the height of U.S. weakness under the Biden administration that we are turning to Kenya to confront crises within our own hemisphere. But beyond the shame such a strategy heaps on the United States, the muddled effort is highly likely to backfire.

Starting point is 00:10:59 It is clear that the U.S. should not repeat the mistakes of the past and send in the military to Haiti every couple of decades to restore a corrupt elite to power. The notion of having African forces do the job instead is also dubious, Martinez-Fernandez wrote. The U.S. must also ensure it is prepared to confront a looming wave of mass migration from Haiti. The first step here is for the Biden administration to immediately end its permissive policies towards illegal immigration and secure the U.S. border. In the American Conservative, Conor Eccles argued, the U.S. should let Haitians decide their own future. In a world wracked by crises, the U.S. has little to gain by imposing a half-baked plan on a country that has long opposed American

Starting point is 00:11:42 intervention in its internal politics, Eccles said. The best path forward is far simpler. As was the case in Afghanistan, the U.S. can best serve Haiti by taking a step back and allowing Haitians to decide their own future. As Jake Johnston, a Haiti expert at the Center for Economic and Policy Research recently told me, the tortured history of U.S.-Haitian relations leaves no other choice. Conversations about Haiti tend to focus on images of chaos and poverty, but few Americans ask where the chaos comes from. In reality, much of Haiti's current woes stem from shoddy, short-sighted U.S. policy.

Starting point is 00:12:18 Over the past century, consecutive American governments have posed as the island nation's savior, only to undermine its hopes for democracy at every turn, Eccles wrote. This history leads to an inescapable conclusion. When Washington puts its finger on the scales of Haitian politics, chaos ensues. Okay, that is it for what the right is saying, which brings us to what the left is saying. The left calls for a safe haven in the U.S. for Haitian refugees. Others say Haiti needs foreign assistance to establish a sustainable government. The New York Daily News editorial board said,

Starting point is 00:13:04 We can and should protect those forced to flee. Haitians need a committed civil society to remain and reconstruct, but it is also perfectly understandable that some people who would simply want to live in stability and quietude would leave, just as some Americans would decamp if our society collapsed into internecine violence, the board wrote. While we may intuitively understand the reasons that make regular life untenable for some, this understanding tends to break down when they actually show up asking for help. Does this mean the U.S. needs to accommodate every person from around the globe suffering under persistent violence and instability? Not really, but our principles and our own economic interests should dictate that we work to accommodate as many as we can, the board wrote.

Starting point is 00:13:44 The federal government should work to expand the existing refugee system in places like Haiti and Ecuador and make greater use of existing executive tools like temporary protected status. In the Chicago Tribune, Elizabeth Shackelford wrote, Haiti can't right itself without restoring security and a working government. There are no quick fixes, but some paths to peace are more promising than others. If Haiti and international partners can learn from its past mistakes, Haiti's inevitable long road ahead could provide a sustainable foundation for a better future. That's a big if, though, Shackelford said. Haiti faces two distinct but related crises,

Starting point is 00:14:22 widespread insecurity and a broken political system. For that reason, the deterioration in Haiti often brings comparisons to Somalia. As a U.S. diplomat who served in the latter, I can offer this lesson. Security gains will remain fleeting in the absence of inclusive, effective government. The hard part begins once that government is in place, though. Its legitimacy will be judged not only by who it appears to represent, but also by its performance. Specifically, it will be judged by whether or not it can return security

Starting point is 00:14:52 to the country. Elections are nice, but they probably aren't as important to the people of Haiti today as their family's safety. Ultimately, it will be judged on whether it can provide the essential services

Starting point is 00:15:04 that Haitians today lack. Alright, that is it for what the right and the left are saying, and now we'll take a look at what some international writers are saying. Some writers in Haiti say the country's leaders must take ownership of their role in the country's collapse. Other writers from abroad point to centuries of exploitation as the driving force behind Haitians' plight. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history,

Starting point is 00:15:51 and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and

Starting point is 00:16:19 older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at fluselvax.ca. In the Haitian Times, McElvey J. Neal said, quit the blame game and focus on ending the bloodshed. Yes, we can blame the march of Western imperialism and neocolonialism across the 19th and 20th centuries

Starting point is 00:16:45 for Haiti's false start towards democracy. These isms allowed repressive regimes to rise to facilitate hegemonic U.S. interests. Yet Haiti cemented its place in the canon of liberation movements across these eras, from abolition, negritude, and pan-Africanism to anti-apartheid and Black Lives Matter. That achievement won't change no matter who helps Haiti now or how they do it. We can still rock our 1804 hoodies for another 220 years. But here's the thing. Cultural pride and political neighbor-shaming don't stop stray bullets from striking people in their beds. They don't compel goons to cease raping and pillaging, displacing families,

Starting point is 00:17:21 or triggering suicides. Rather feed the haiti in crisis story turning it into a gawk inducing sideshow in the midst of world affairs neil wrote all this points to a reason for haitians to expect and ask for what the world should and can give at this moment an armed rescue mission in the guardian ken and malik wrote plundered and corrupted for 200 years haiti was doomed to end in anarchy. To make sense of the latest events, we need to understand not just where Haiti is today, but also how it got there, Malik said. The history of Haiti is one in which the nation's governing classes have exhibited

Starting point is 00:17:57 a contempt for the masses extraordinary even by the standards of the global south. It is also one in which foreign powers have never shrunk from repression and bloodshed, or straightforward theft, in pursuit of their aims, sometimes in alliance with local elites, sometimes in opposition to them. The tragedy of Haiti is not just the devastation wrought on its people, but also that, while today it may be a symbol of corruption and lawlessness, 200 years ago it symbolized, indeed was the living embodiment of, the opposite, the possibilities of human emancipation, Malik wrote. The tragedy is that the opposite has happened, that the people of Haiti remain excluded from the governance of their country.

Starting point is 00:18:35 Until that changes, Haiti will not change. All right, that is it for the right, left, and international takes, which brings us to Isaac's take. Just as a reminder, this is Isaac's opinion, and I am just reading it in the first person. This is a terrible situation with no good way out. It's been so long since Haiti's last election that its parliament does not even have enough current members to hold a vote. Its current president, who was appointed after its last elected president was assassinated, has been feckless against powerful gangs throughout his term. It has no standing army, a depleted police force, and no faith in its government. Now hundreds of thousands have been displaced, and mass famine threatens the lives of millions

Starting point is 00:19:24 of Haitians. As many commentators have said, Haiti's disarray is a seemingly permanent state. To understand why, it's necessary to get a better understanding of Haiti's history, which is one of the bloodiest and most traumatized of any country in the world. It's impossible to sum it all up in a few paragraphs, but here are a few major events. Immediately after Haiti's successful rebellion in 1791, Haiti was effectively embargoed by Spain, France, and the newfound United States. To allow it to enter the global economy, the French, struggling for funds after their own

Starting point is 00:19:56 Republican revolution, demanded Haiti pay reparations for the lives of slave owners killed in its revolt. Haiti had little choice but to give in, agreeing to pay more than its annual GDP to France every year. To get the funds it needed to pay France back, France offered Haiti a loan, which it also had to pay back with interest. These payments are called Haiti's double debt. In 1915, Haiti's president was assassinated, prompting the United States to occupy the country to help stabilize it. The U.S. installed a government, plundered Haiti's treasury, and withdrew 15 years later following a series of uprisings. The U.S. intervened again in the 1990s to depose a dictator who overthrew then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Does colonialism,

Starting point is 00:20:40 isolation, and exploitation fully explain Haiti's current situation? No, but it does begin to explain it, and it does explain the nation's deep-seated and understandable distrust of foreign intervention. More recently, in 2010, Haiti was rocked by a deadly earthquake, which left it desperate for aid. Not only did some of that aid go missing, but the UN also accidentally caused a deadly cholera outbreak when it established a camp upstream of Haiti's main water source. The earthquake also destroyed the presidential palace, which symbolically still has not been rebuilt. There are many things in Haiti's past that could and should have gone differently, but they didn't. So what could the US do now, and what should it do? As I see it, there are three main options. Solution one, do nothing.

Starting point is 00:21:27 As many commentators have suggested, Haiti's problems must be solved by Haiti. The long history of devastating foreign intervention has not only made Haitians mistrustful of the U.S., but U.S. citizens mistrustful of its own involvement. We've seen how our involvement in Afghanistan in recent decades seems to have just made the situation worse and cost us billions of dollars and thousands of lives. We should just stay out of it. The problem, without the international help Haitians have been screaming for, it's likely that Haiti's situation will devolve further. Gang leader Jimmy Barbecue Cherizier united rival factions in response to President Henri's attempts to secure a police force from Kenya. That concerted opposition tells us that such a force would probably be effective.

Starting point is 00:22:10 It also tells us that power vacuums, like the one caused by Henri's absence, created ideal situations for violent disorder to thrive. And if disorder does thrive, it will cause an enormous refugee crisis. We should want to help Haiti not just for humanitarian reasons, but because our already straining resources on our own border will buckle under the weight of an unimaginable migrant crisis if the anarchy in Haiti continues. Solution two, intervene through international consensus. CARICOM has already stated the process of organizing the nine-member council to choose Haiti's next president and leave the process in the hands of a regional cooperative makes the most sense. We should help the UN organize the

Starting point is 00:22:50 police force from Kenya and other countries. We should help CARICOM usher in the next government. And we should help international groups fund the next stage of Haitians' rebuild. The problem? The biggest issue with this plan is the subtext. Any future government that has arrived at through peaceful consensus of Haitian politicians and power players will have to include Charizé and the gangsters, who essentially have a gun to the head of the political process on the ground. As Kanan Malik wrote under what international voices are saying, Haiti has been plagued by corruption within its own ruling and elite classes. Ushering Henri out the door only ushers more of those corrupt leaders in. Solution three, fully intervene. The level of corruption in Haiti is

Starting point is 00:23:31 total, the police force is outgunned, and the army is non-existent. The arable land in Haiti has been depleted from decades of poor usage rights enforcement, and before that by centuries of aggressive colonial sugar and coffee harvesting. Haiti isn't becoming a failed state. It already is one. If the Haitian people have any hope of surviving, its state must be rebuilt. We should come in with a military force, establish law and order, rout Sharazei and the gangs, and help Haiti actually build its country back.

Starting point is 00:24:00 The problem? First, it's almost politically unthinkable. The U.S. has no appetite for nation-building, and Biden authorizing a U.S.-led and years-long occupation before a presidential election is unimaginable, and for good reason. Putting U.S. boots on the ground in Haiti would mean engaging in urban warfare against the gangs, then installing a friendly regime, which starts to sound eerily familiar. Why would we expect a military intervention in Haiti, a country with a very valid list of reasons to distrust foreign occupations, to be any better this time? What do I recommend? This is one of those days where I don't mind saying,

Starting point is 00:24:36 I honestly don't know. As I wrote out in the pros and cons of each strategy, I find myself more convinced by the reasons not to pursue each one. Doing nothing and enabling a refugee crisis of historic proportions is unthinkable, validating a brutal gang leader and entrenching Haitian corruption is unthinkable, and a full U.S. intervention of Haiti is unthinkable. In my opinion, of all the bad options, a full military occupation sounds like the worst choice, but I don't have much more to offer beyond that. In the short term, the best we can do is whatever eases the violence and allows some humanitarian relief to flow to the millions of Haitians in need. In the long term,

Starting point is 00:25:17 I have no satisfying answer. The best I can say is that we should pray for the safety of the many innocents in Haiti, try to educate ourselves on the situation, and hope our political leaders have a more creative solution than I do. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, that is it for Isaac's take. We are skipping today's reader questions since we gave our main story some extra space. But if you do have a question you want answered, you can reply to Isaac at isaac at readtangle.com. All right, next up is our Under the Radar section.

Starting point is 00:26:07 Boeing's troubled 2024 continued this week with the news that the aircraft company's CEO, Dave Calhoun, will step down at the end of the year as part of a leadership shakeup that includes the head of Boeing's Commercial Aircraft Unit. Though Calhoun framed his decision to step down as part of a deliberate succession plan, Boeing's board had voted in 2021 to raise the company's mandatory retirement age to enable him to serve as CEO until 2028. a panel flying off of a Boeing 737 MAX 9 plane during an Alaska Airlines flight in January have prompted renewed security of the company's commitment to safety and production quality. The New York Times has this story on the leadership changes, and Fortune has the story on the company culture that foreshadowed Boeing's safety crisis. All right, next up is our numbers section. The approximate population of Haiti is 11.5 million

Starting point is 00:27:10 people. The approximate number of Haitians currently facing crisis levels of food insecurity or worse is 5 million people. The percentage of Haitians who received humanitarian food aid intended for them between August and December of 2023 is 5%. That's according to a new report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification. The percentage of Port-au-Prince that is controlled by gangs is 80%, and that's according to UN estimates. The Dominican Republic's approximate GDP per capita in 2002 was $7,400. Haiti's approximate GDP per capita in 2002 was $2,200. The Dominican Republic's approximate GDP per capita in 2022 is $24,100. Haiti's approximate GDP per capita in 2022 is $3,200. All right, and last but not least, our have a nice day story. Every morning, 50 to 100

Starting point is 00:28:09 people line up in front of a new kind of recycling center owned by the municipality of Aarhus, the second largest city in Denmark. Instead of discarding items for its material to be used, Danes go to the center called Reuse to give and take all sorts of items for free. The project started in 2015 when Kridsloob, a company owned by the city, decided to try to reduce the amount or whose citizens were throwing away. Now, more than two metric tons of objects from dishes to computers move through the Reuse center every day, from one person to another. You take something that wasn't worth anything and add value to it just by picking it up. This idea is maybe the key or the cornerstone of what reuse is to me,

Starting point is 00:28:50 explains Lasse Anderson, a reuse regular of about four years. Reasons to be Cheerful has the story, and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for listening today. As always, if you'd like to support our work, you can go to readtangle.com and become a member. Starting tomorrow, we're going to be taking a little bit of time off from the podcast and we'll return again on April 2nd. Isaac is out of the country and I will be moving.

Starting point is 00:29:23 We will discuss more about what's going to be happening in tomorrow's newsletter. So stay tuned for that. And until then, have a good one. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and engineered by John Wall. The script is edited by our managing editor, Ari Weitzman, Will Kabak, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bokova, who is also our social media manager.

Starting point is 00:29:54 Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. And if you're looking for more from Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases.

Starting point is 00:30:50 What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at fluselvax.ca.

Tangle - The violence in Haiti.

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