Non US Media reports from Haiti are quite different from the ones we’re getting, as this Al Jazeera report shows. Flights with aid, support and life saving equiptment from other nations are being turned away from the aiport as thousands of  armed  US and US troops arrive. And Trinidad Express News reports on the Caribbean Community’s inability to get aid into Haiti:

The Community’s emergency aid mission to Haiti, comprising Heads of Government and leading technical officials, failed to secure permission Friday to land at that devasted country’s aiport, now under the control of the United States…

On Friday afternoon the US State Department confirmed signing two ’Memoranda of Understanding’ with the Government of Haiti that made ’official that the United States is in charge of all inbound and outbound flights and aid off-loading…’

Further, according to the agreements signed, US medical personnel ’now have the authority to operate on Haitian citizens and otherwise render medical assistance without having to wait for licences from Haiti’s government…’

Prior to the US taking control of Haiti’s airport, a batch of some 30 Cuban doctors had left Havana, following Wednesday’s earthquake, to join more than 300 of their colleagues who have been working there for more than a year…

Asked whether the difficuties encountered by the Caricom mission may be related to reports that US authorities were not anxious to facilitate landing of aircraft from Cuba and Venezuela, Jamaican Prime Minister Golding said he could ’only hope that there is no truth to such immature thinking in the face of the horrific scale of Haiti’s tragedy…’

Naomi Klein’s take:

We have to be absolutely clear that this tragedy—which is part natural, part unnatural—must, under no circumstances, be used to, one, further indebt Haiti and, two, to push through unpopular corporatist policies in the interest of our corporations. This is not conspiracy theory. They have done it again and again.

On Democracy Now, Klein posted links to the Heritage Foundation’s site “Things to Remember While Helping Haiti”

The U.S. government response should be bold and decisive. It must mobilize U.S. civilian and military capabilities for short-term rescue and relief and long-term recovery and reform…While on the ground in Haiti, the U.S. military can also interrupt the nightly flights of cocaine to Haiti and the Dominican Republic from the Venezuelan coast and counter the ongoing efforts of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to destabilize the island of Hispaniola…Meanwhile, the U.S. must be prepared to insist that the Haiti government work closely with the U.S. to insure that corruption does not infect the humanitarian assistance flowing to Haiti. Long-term reforms for Haitian democracy and its economy are also badly overdue.

But what those reforms are should be decided by the Haitians, not by the United States or Venezuela, KBR or Halliburton, or any other nation or multinational corporation. The Haitian people deserve the self determination they fought for over 200 years ago.