Esline Belcombe, 25, lives in Corail Camp with her daughter (aged two), her mother, and a nephew. (Photo: Oxfam/Flickr)

Haitians are still battling to rebuild their lives and their homes two years after the devastating earthquake that killed 300,000 people.

Historian Laurent Dubois has just returned from Haiti. He’s also the author of the just released book Haiti: The Aftershocks of History. On today’s show Dubois explains to host Marco Werman how Haiti’s turbulent past continues to resonate in its politics today.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: Historian Laurent Dubois has just returned from Haiti and he sees cause for optimism.

Laurent Dubois: This is a country that made an incredible transformation at its founding by overthrowing slavery, and there’s no reason that we can’t expect maybe a new moment of change in the future.

Werman: Dubois teaches at Duke University and he has a new book out called Haiti: The Aftershocks of History. In it, Dubois focuses on key moments in Haitian history that as he says reverberate today.

Dubois: A lot of the thinking always goes back to Haiti’s founding as a nation founded by slave revolutionaries in a world that was quite hostile to that victory and that overthrow of slavery. So there’s a great deal of attention to that. Haitians are also very aware in a way Americans are less so of the impact of the US occupation and of the US role in their country in the 20th century.

Werman: I’m sorry to jump in, but let’s return to that time. US Marines occupied Haiti for about two decades starting about 1915, and as you explained, that’s when many of our current images of Haiti got embossed in our American minds. How did that happen and how does it resonate today?

Dubois: Well, this is a long occupation. The US was very involved in Haiti. I mean it really directly ran and governed Haiti for two decades. And at the time a lot of images were produced of Haiti through marine memoirs. This is actually the time when the first Zombie films were made with direct reference to Haiti became kind of a mainstay of our culture. So we had a kind of set of stereotypes that grew up about Haiti and at the same time, curiously most of Americans are not aware that we were in Haiti for that time. So we kind of inherited stereotypes and cultural stereotypes without much historical knowledge. And that’s one of the things I try to rectify in the book so that we get a better sense of what that history meant for Haiti.

Werman: One thing you go into on the chapter on the US occupation in the early 20th century was this idea of using a really nascent military techniques against Haitians, aerial bombardment. That was just really surprising. Tell me about that.

Dubois: Yeah, it’s one of the first places, probably not the first place, but one of the first places the US uses aerial bombardment against the insurgent groups who are known as the Cockos, who were rebelling against the US in the countryside. And it’s a story that really isn’t much told in the United States, but again, resides very strongly in Haitian memory because of course, it was a particularly new and terrifying form of combat. So I think knowing those sorts of things is important because it gives us a sense of how historical memory might shape the present.

Werman: Now, you write about how at the time many African American leaders didn’t oppose the occupation. Booker T. Washington celebrated the occupation of Haiti as the only way to civilize Haitians. W. E. B. Du Bois said the occupation was beneficial. Why?

Dubois: Well, the African-American relationship with Haiti has been complicated and vexed in many ways, but I think partly it’s that there are these images of Haiti that are hard for people to escape. There was a sense of a need for racial uplift both inside the country and that could be applied to Haiti. And so it is important I think for us to realize how ambiguous and complicated these perspectives are in our own country.

Werman: You know, in the meantime I’m just wondering how do those stereotypes from the US occupation and now other stereotypes that have been piled on, you know, the basket case country, how do you unhook those? How do you make them less potent?

Dubois: Well, it’s a real challenge because they really are deeply embedded and whenever Haiti comes in the media you do find that these tropes are just kind of available and in some kind of unconscious space they just pop out. So I think we need more information. Obviously, many Haitian writers have tried to confront these. I begin the book with the story of a writer in the 1880s sort of trying to confront negative images of the country. The more information we have I think the better, but we also really need to insist that if we are going to be involved as we are in Haiti, that needs to start with some humility and some kind of recognition that we teach ourselves about the country as well.

Werman: What about Haitian history for you could really help move the country forward if that chapter of history were just better understood, either by Haitians or by the international community?

Dubois: Well, there’s a core idea in the book that I draw from a Haitian sociologist, Jean Casimir, which is that Haiti, rural Haiti anyway, is built around what he calls a counter-plantation system, a system that emerged on the part of slaves who wanted to reconstruct a world that resisted the plantation, but also resisted its return. So it’s built on individual autonomy, a lot of entrepreneurialism, on a kind of sense that to kind of be free also means to have economic independence. But it’s something that in many ways has often been under attack in Haiti rather than supported.

Werman: Let me just finally ask you this, Laurent, I mean there are numerous commemorations and memorials today in Port-au-Prince in Haiti, for the second anniversary of the earthquake. When you think about this anniversary what crosses your mind?

Dubois: The ways in which Haitian people have grappled with it and the way in which religious communities have grappled with it, and also the way in which social solidarity kind of dominated actually the response in Haiti I think is something to remember. I mean this is a society that suffered a massive disaster on a scale rarely seen, and yet the response was one of kind of social solidarity and working together. And that’s I think something to remember and remind ourselves when we hear maybe more negative or stereotypical visions of Haiti.

Werman: Laurent Dubois is a Duke University scholar of the French Caribbean. His latest book is Haiti: The Aftershocks of History. Laurent, thank you very much.

Dubois: Thanks a lot, Marco, I appreciate it.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

In the de facto Palestinian capital of Ramallah in the West Bank, hotels and restaurants are fully booked. Every other street corner seems to have a new building going up. The security situation is probably better than at any time in the last decade.

In many ways, it’s been a good year, said Husam Zomlot, a spokesman for the Fatah party’s international relations commission.

2010 was a Palestinian year par excellence, in terms of succeeding despite the most adverse, unprecedented situations for any nation, Zomlot said.

Zomlot said the Israelis still occupy Palestinian lands in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and that situation must end.

Nonetheless, Zomlot said the Palestinians and their leadership in Ramallah have turned a corner in the last year.

The logic of ‘if they destroy, you destroy’ isn’t working, Zomlot explained from his office. Palestinians now, after all these years are focused on the positive energy, despite the extremely negative energy coming from their opponent.

The World Bank says that actually despite all the difficult circumstances Palestinians face, they are now ready to assume full statehood.

What the Palestinians are not ready to do, however, is return to the negotiating table.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas is still refusing to re-start direct talks with Israel unless settlement building stops.

Going into 2011, the Palestinians are focusing on a different strategy. They are seeking unilateral recognition as a state from the international community. They are also reportedly seeking a resolution from the United Nations Security Council that would condemn Israeli settlement building.

Israeli government spokesman Yigal Palmor said such efforts are harming the chances for peace.

All these diplomatic successes that they boast now are nothing but fireworks. I mean, they make a lot of noise, they please the boys, but they vanish into thin air very quickly.

If the Palestinians continue down this road, Palmor said, they will be left with nothing tangible.

Palmor said direct peace talks are the only way for Israelis and Palestinians to resolve their differences. And despite the lack of progress in 2010, he said next year could provide an opportunity.
There is no lack of disagreement ¬ profound disagreement ¬ between ourselves and the Palestinians on many core issues, Palmor said in an interview with The World.

But how else will we ever solve these problems, if we don¹t talk to each other?

Palmor added that, direct talks are only a matter of time.

But so far, the US-sponsored peace process is widely considered a failure in the region.

Washington has suffered another major setback in the Middle East this year, said Israeli security expert Jonathan Rynhold of Bar Ilan University.

Iran and its allies – Hezbollah, Syria and Hamas – have actually increased in power, Rynhold said.

Turkey has begun to move into [Iran’s] sphere and Hezbollah seems to have made enormous ground, he said. Rynhold described the Islamic militant group as the de facto ruler of Lebanon that has acquired rockets capable of hitting anywhere inside of Israel.

Rynhold said the US and Israel both perceive Iran’s nuclear program as a serious threat and as a result, military cooperation between the two allies has never been better than during the past year.

He said the Israelis do see military force as one possible option for dealing with Iran, but it’s not a great one, he said.

While Israel certainly thinks that a nuclear Iran is a disaster for the region, it has to weigh up how much damage it could do to the Iranian nuclear program and given that, how much damage would Iran do to Israel in response.

On both counts, Rynhold said the estimates are such that Israel is likely to let the United States continue to take the lead on dealing with Iran during 2011.
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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

JEB SHARP: A little over ten years ago, we were in the grip of Y2K panic, the fear that computers would stop working at the turn of millennium because they weren’t programmed to recognize dates after 1999.  Billions of dollars were spent on trying to avert a disaster, and in the end, things went smoothly.  So few people were worried last week about the start of the new decade.  Turns out in Germany, they should have been.  David Hecht has the story from Berlin.

DAVID HECHT: Last Thursday, as the clocks struck midnight, some 30 million credit and ATM cards in Germany stopped working. That’s around a third of all the cards issued in the country. Manfred Westphal is with Germany’s consumer affairs office.   He says there’s a glitch in the cards’ chips.

MANFRED WESTPHAL: The problem is with the wrong programming of the chip so that the ATMs and the systems in the retail trade cannot read the date on the chip.

HECHT: And that is a problem.  But Westphal says consumers and retailers have come up with innovative ways to get around it.

WESTPHAL: They are putting Scotch tape over the chip so the chip will not be read but the magnetic strip will be read. During the last days it has allowed some retailers to get along with this problem. But this of course is not the solution.

HECHT: Germans aren’t used to improvising banking solutions. They pride themselves on having a solid foolproof system and thinking ahead to prevent problems. Westphal said Germans were particularly vigilant about Y2K.

WESTPHAL: There was a lot of preparation in Germany for the year 2000. All the software programs were updated and prepared for the switch.

HECHT: In fact with this Y2010K problem, many Germans are pointing the finger at the French company that made the card chips.  Westphal says the company has accepted responsibility, but that doesn’t let the Germans off the hook.

WESTPHAL: German Banks didn’t check before if the system works. German banks and banking associations have not prepared in a correct way.

HECHT: Not surprisingly the bank association responsible for issuing the cards has stressed how quickly it’s responded to the problem. Michaela Roth is a representative.

MICHAELA ROTH: [speaking in German] Our crisis response system worked very, very well and that certainly wouldn’t have been possible if we hadn’t had a modern system to quickly sort out the problem.

HECHT: She says nearly all the bank machines in Germany have been reprogrammed to accept the faulty cards, and by next Monday all German retailers will be able to accept the cards as well.  But there’s still a problem.  The faulty cards may not work in other countries, and right now, many Germans are away on vacation, so they may have some trouble paying their hotel bills.  For The World, I’m David Hecht in Berlin

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Watch the Snow Leopard in action:

• Ghana Ski Team

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: This is The World. I’m Marco Werman. Every time the Olympic Games roll around there’s usually one or two competitors who are just a bit surprising – fish out of water. Take the famous Jamaican bobsled team who took part in the 1988 winter Olympics in Calgary. Well the next winter games get underway 101 days from now in Vancouver and there will be another unusual participant but he won’t be there just to make up the numbers as The World’s Alex Gallafent reports.

ALEX GALLAFENT: Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong is a slalom skier. He happens to be from Ghana. Not a lot of snow there. But he happens to love throwing himself down snow-covered mountains at high speed.

KWAME NKRUMAH-ACHEAMPONG: Unless you’ve been at the top of a giant slalom or super [PH] G course looking down and looking at the slick slope, all the gates, and everybody looking in your face, waiting to see what you can do, it’s really hard to understand why people go into ski races when they know they can break their legs, their necks, their back. It’s just a wonderful sport.

GALLAFENT: And Acheampong is good at it. He’s just qualified to represent Ghana at next year’s Olympics – the country’s first representative at the winter games. Oh and he only started skiing six years ago.

ACHEAMPONG: I got a job at the indoor ski center, picked up a pair of snowblades and had a go.

GALLAFENT: That indoor ski center was in the UK, the country where Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong lives today. He’d left Ghana to pursue a master’s degree in tourism management but school was expensive. He had to get a job. Working as a receptionist at a sport’s center seemed a good fit. Free indoor skiing was a bonus.

ACHEAMPONG: I just did it for the fun of doing it. [INDISCERNIBLE] every staff member who worked there. So I just had a go. And it’s kind of snowballed and I find myself heading to Vancouver.

EDDIE EDWARDS: I just think he should go there and enjoy every minute of it.

GALLAFENT: That’s Eddie Edwards also in the UK. Over two decades ago he captured the world’s attention at the Calgary games. Eddie Edwards was known as the Eagle. In regular life Edwards worked as a plasterer. He still does in fact. But at the Olympics his quixotic mission was to excel at the ski jump. He didn’t. Eddie the Eagle Edwards was depending on your perspective a hero of amateurs everywhere of simply the worst ski jumper ever to appear at the Olympics.

EDWARDS: There were those who thought this is great and that was exemplifying the whole Olympic spirit. And there were those who felt I wasn’t an athlete and shouldn’t have been there.

GALLAFENT: Eddie Edwards expects Kwame Nkrumah Acheampong will get the same kinds of reaction in Vancouver.

EDWARDS: I think he knows and everybody else knows that I don’t think he’s going to win a medal or go even close. But he should go out there and enjoy the whole experience of being in the Olympics and do the best he can. That’s all everybody can expect of him and just enjoy it really.

GALLAFENT: But hold on says the Ghanaian skier who has a nickname of his own – the snow leopard.

ACHEAMPONG: I think Eddie the Eagle let the whole fun side of what he was doing take over you know what he was trying to achieve and instead of being looked upon as a professional sports person he became a joke.

GALLAFENT: Ouch. The snow leopard isn’t messing around here. When he has the funding he trains in the Italian Alps and he’s far from the worst Olympic level skier around. Still Kwame Nkrumah Acheampong is realistic about his Olympic chances.

ACHEAMPONG: I can’t win the races I go into. [INDISCERNIBLE] tough. So skiing is a sport which just has an endless challenge for me. And I don’t want to look at the final table of athletes and see myself at the bottom. I’d want at least five other athletes to be behind me.

GALLAFENT: You wouldn’t bet against him. For The World I’m Alex Gallafent.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.