Wikileaks Haiti: The Aristide Files

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Wikileaks Haiti: The Aristide Files

Postby Jeff » Sun Aug 07, 2011 8:02 am

Kim Ives and Ansel Herz
August 5, 2011

US officials led a far-reaching international campaign aimed at keeping former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide exiled in South Africa, rendering him a virtual prisoner there for the last seven years, according to secret US State Department cables.

The cables show that high-level US and UN officials even discussed a politically motivated prosecution of Aristide to prevent him from “gaining more traction with the Haitian population and returning to Haiti.”

The secret cables, made available to the Haitian weekly newspaper Haïti Liberté by WikiLeaks, show how the political defeat of Aristide and his Lavalas movement has been the central pillar of US policy toward the Caribbean nation over the last two US administrations, even though—or perhaps because—US officials understood that he was the most popular political figure in Haiti.

They also reveal how US officials and their diplomatic counterparts from France, Canada, the UN and the Vatican tried to vilify and ostracize the Haitian political leader.

For the Vatican, Aristide was an “active proponent of voodoo.” For Washington, he was “dangerous to Haiti’s democratic consolidation,” according to the secret US cables.

...

Aristide has spoken forcefully against the UN occupation, particularly in his 2010 year-end letter to the Haitian people. “We cannot forget the $5 billion which has already been spent for MINUSTAH over these past six years,” he wrote. “Anybody can see how many houses, hospitals, and schools that wasted money could have built for the victims” of the January 12, 2010, earthquake that destroyed much of Port-au-Prince and surrounding regions.

Such positions are major reasons Washington fought to get and keep Aristide out of Haiti, the cables make clear. “A premature departure of MINUSTAH would leave the [Haitian] government...vulnerable to...resurgent populist and anti-market economy political forces—reversing gains of the last two years,” wrote US Ambassador Janet Sanderson in an October 1, 2008, cable. MINUSTAH “is an indispensable tool in realizing core USG [US government] policy interests in Haiti.”

At a high-level meeting five years ago, top US and UN officials discussed how the “Aristide Movement Must Be Stopped,” according to an August 2, 2006, cable. It described how former Guatemalan diplomat Edmond Mulet, then chief of MINUSTAH, “urged US legal action against Aristide to prevent the former president from gaining more traction with the Haitian population and returning to Haiti.”

...


http://www.thenation.com/article/162598 ... tide-files
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Re: Wikileaks Haiti: The Aristide Files

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun Aug 07, 2011 10:25 am

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Colin Powell is “the most powerful and damaging black to rise to influence

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“The deed is done. Haiti has been raped. The act was sanctioned by the United States, Canada and France.” – Editorial, Jamaica Observer

Colin Powell is “the most powerful and damaging black to rise to influence in the world in my lifetime.” – TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson

''All the people that supported will be dead in three months.'' – Haiti government attorney Ira Kurzban

The new order congeals like blood on the streets of Port-au-Prince. Haiti’s dance of death begins anew, a convergence of low-life assassins, high-living compradors, preening French imperialists and global American pirates – an unspeakable bacchanal


“I am the chief,” declares Guy Philippe, the 36-year-old, Green Beret-trained, three-time coup-meister and sometime police chief. “The country is in my hands.”

Not really. Haiti is in the same American and French hands that snatched President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the Central African Republic – an involuntary destination on its face, where a French-approved military dictator sits in a palace that he seized from an elected President precisely one year ago. Pleased with the finesse of the "perfect coordination" between Paris and Washington, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin no doubt savors the grotesque, near-symmetric poetry of this joint venture in international piracy, in which Aristide is transported from the site of one coup to another.

“The niceties of democracy were thrown out the window, and the matters of principle so vigorously defended by President Chirac and Foreign Minister de Villepin over Iraq were quickly shunted aside,” said the Jamaica Observer in a March 1 editorial. “And new Canadians went with the flow.” The Caribbean Community must understand, “if they thought otherwise,” that “democratically-elected leaders are easily expendable if they, at a particular time, do not fit the profile in favor with those who are strong and powerful.”

more
http://www.blackcommentator.com/80/80_cover_haiti.html

Emergency Haiti summit tomorrow
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=392820
U.S.-Sponsored Regime Change in Haiti
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=394294
Coup d'etat dismays Haitian community
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=396824
Powell and Aide Questioned on Haiti by Panel's Skeptics
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=398215
Caribbean countries ask for investigation into Aristide resignation and re
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=397673
Press Release from Congresswoman Barbara Lee on Haiti
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=399010
Rep. Maxine Waters Says Aristide Is Being Held Like a Prisoner
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=399141
HAITI -- (Senate - March 04, 2004) Senator Leahy
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=401256
THE SITUATION IN HAITI -- (Senate - March 04, 2004)Harkin
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=401107
Haitians hail rebel troops
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=395091
Denying Haiti's Refugees
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=403680
Large protest in Haiti focuses on role of U.S.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=403652
Haiti's problems spill over into U.S. presidential race
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=403660
Black Caucus backs Caricom's call for Haiti probe
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=403773
Rebel Says He's New Haiti Military Chief
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=403704
Foreign troops brace for protests in Haiti
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=404441
Fears of rising violence in capital
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=404942
Aristide's guest privileges pared in exile
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=403086
SA weapons sent to Haiti
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=405668
Before fall of Aristide, Haiti hit by aid cutoff
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=405656
Aristide's Final Hours
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=404980
Haiti’s brutal history largely of our making
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=406215
Haitian Rebels Say They Won't Disarm Yet
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=404965
Arms control body rejects DA's claims - Haiti
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=407345
Haiti's Aristide Calls for Peaceful Resistance by Supporters, AFP Says
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=407238
U.S. delegation meets with President Aristide / details of coup
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=410969
Lee proposes Haiti commission
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=413019
Congressional News Conference Meeting with Former Haitan President
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=417415
U.S. Troops Hunt for Gunmen in Haiti
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=425746
U.S. Says Aristide Visit to Jamaica 'Not Helpful'
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=425798
Aristide Back in Caribbean Heat, Haitian Details 'Coup' by U.S.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=424779
Haiti's New Leader Said to Pick Cabinet, Shunning Politicians
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=427564
Venezuela offers Aristide refuge
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=425994
Probing U.S. ties to Haiti coup
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=427579
U.S. furious at Jamaica for embrace of Aristide
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=432236
Criminal Case Against Aristide Planned in Haiti
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=434520
Threats to Aristide supporters
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=433501
Missionaries murdered - Uganda
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=435718
Top U.S. officer tells Aristide to keep quiet
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=432891
Five young men murdered in Port-au-Prince slum
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=437178
Haiti: Security Vacuum in the North
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=438010
Human rights group says Haiti's new leader in 'unholy alliance' with rebel
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=438432
Looters teach Haiti a harsh lesson
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=439270
Police, former rebels clash in northern Haiti
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=439227
Aristide's ex-security chief faces drug charge
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=439089


fuck DemocraticUnderground........they are not democratic and they are not underground.....truth in advertising Skinner....truth in advertising PLEASE

most of your truth tellers are gone... some (so naive to believe Tinoire) syphoned off to ProgressiveIndependent so to be silenced by the fuckin' traitor Tinoire (who are ya sleeping with now T...Dickhead Cheney?) and her gang of fuckin' banditos......but we are still here still posting....still speaking truth to power
Last edited by seemslikeadream on Sun Aug 07, 2011 11:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Wikileaks Haiti: The Aristide Files

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun Aug 07, 2011 11:25 am


WHILE I SIT HERE TRYING TO THINK OF THINGS TO SAY

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SOMEONE LIES BLEEDING IN A FIELD SOMEWHERE
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SO IT WOULD SEEM WE'VE STILL GOT A LONG LONG WAY TO GO
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I'VE SEEN ALL I WANNA SEE TODAY
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WHILE I SIT HERE TRYING TO MOVE YOU ANYWAY I CAN

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SOMEONE'S SON LIES DEAD IN A GUTTER SOMEWHERE
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AND IT WOULD SEEM THAT WE'VE GOT A LONG LONG WAY TO GO
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BUT I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE
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SWITCH IT OFF IT WILL GO AWAY
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TURN IT OFF IF YOU WANT TO
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SWITCH IT OFF OR LOOK AWAY
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WHILE I SIT AND WE TALK AND TALK AND WE TALK SOME MORE2
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SOMEONE'S LOVED ONE'S HEART STOPS BEATING IN A STREET SOMEWHERE4
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SO IT WOULD SEEM WE'VE STILL GOT A LONG LONG WAY TO GO, I KNOW
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I'VE HEARD ALL I WANNA HEAR TODAY
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TURN IT OFF IF YOU WANT TO (TURN IT OFF IF YOU WANT TO)
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SWITCH IT OFF IT WILL GO AWAY (SWITCH IT OFF IT WILL GO AWAY)
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TURN IT OFF IF YOU WANT TO (TURN IT OFF IF YOU WANT TO)
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SWITCH IT OFF OR LOOK AWAY (SWITCH IT OFF OR LOOK AWAY)
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SWITCH IT OFF
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SWITCH IT OFF
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SWITCH IT OFF
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SWITCH IT OFF
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SWITCH IT OFF
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TURN IT OFF
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thanks phil collins for the words
my heart to the people of Haiti
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Wikileaks Haiti: The Aristide Files

Postby Marie Laveau » Tue Aug 09, 2011 9:18 pm

I don't know how many of you keep up with the work of Dr. Paul Farmer, but his work in Haiti for many, many years is unequaled.

I'm not at home now so I can't access the info I have on this, but I wrote a fairly extensive paper critiquing Paul Farmer's work and that of Dr. Edward Green [I kid you not] and the difference in AIDS/HIV policies in each country, and why (supposedly) Uganda's HIV/AIDS ABC (Abstinence, Be Faithful, Condoms) policy worked so wel [it did not]l and Haiti's and South Africa's was such an abject failure. What was going on....well, it's involved and has to do with the neo-cons and money flowing into the corrupt Ugandan government to control the country's resources. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Anyway, there is a book I consulted and now I cannot remember the name, but he put forth a very good thesis that the reason the U.S. and France are determined to destroy Haiti is simply because they were the first country to revolt against the constant malignant intervention by both countries. It's as simple as the fact that Haiti revolted, held them at bay for a long time, and continues to survive in the face of every bit of hell that can be thrown at them.

Basically it's as simple as that; although I know many people say there are resources that TParasitesTB want. Perhaps.

Anyway, my research showed that Green's work was a lie, and the professor gave me ten extra points on the paper, so it must have been okay. I am certainly simplifying the research in a thirty page paper, but that's the jist of it.
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Re: Wikileaks Haiti: The Aristide Files

Postby wallflower » Wed Aug 10, 2011 1:24 pm

I believe the book Marie Laveau refers is The Uses of Haiti there is a brief review here.

It's a bit off topic to the thread but with the riots in the UK I've been thinking of C.L.R. James. James saw the Haitian Revolution as being as great in significance as the French and American Revolutions. Keith Hart provides an interesting window to see the significance the thinking of C.L.R. James to our current situation. Here's a search at Hart's blog keyed to C.L.R. James.
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Re: Wikileaks Haiti: The Aristide Files

Postby Marie Laveau » Thu Aug 11, 2011 5:08 am

Actually my assigned analysis was on Farmer's 'AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame.'

The Edward Green book was, 'Rethinking AIDS Prevention.' I don't know why I didn't put those up with my post. 'The Uses of Haiti' is an excellent book, as well. If anyone is curious about Farmer's work there, I can't recommend 'Mountains Beyond Mountains' enough. A beautiful book.

The other book I mentioned, I just can't remember the name, and I'm not at home now, but I'll post that when I get back.
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Re: Wikileaks Haiti: The Aristide Files

Postby stefano » Thu Aug 11, 2011 5:59 am

Staying off-topic but on the AIDS thing: as I have it the American neocons quite explicitly do not want condom use to be promoted, and push their obscene abstinence-based policies everywhere. ABC predated the rising influence of necon-affiliated pols in Uganda (which had much to do with the Evangelical re-birth of Museveni's wife), and it was only recently, under Bush, that ABC was rolled back and replaced with abstinence policies.

Beyond Slogans: Lessons From Uganda's Experience With ABC and HIV/AIDS
By Susan A. Cohen (2003)

Between the late 1980s and mid-1990s, at a time when HIV/AIDS was well on its way toward ravaging Sub-Saharan Africa, Uganda achieved an extraordinary feat: It stopped the spread of HIV/AIDS in its tracks and saw the nation's rate of infection plummet. As word of the "Uganda miracle" spread, journalists, researchers, policymakers and advocates all descended to try to ascertain how it was accomplished.
[...]
Despite the evidence from Uganda and these other countries, U.S. HIV prevention policy is focused on promoting abstinence. Indeed, Global AIDS Coordinator Randall Tobias personally endorsed a provision in recently enacted U.S. law requiring that at least one-third of all U.S. assistance to prevent HIV/AIDS globally be reserved for "abstinence-until-marriage" programs ("U.S. AIDS Policy: Priority on Treatment, Conservatives' Approach to Prevention," TGR, August 2003, page 1). In effect, this makes "abstinence-until-marriage" advocacy the single most important HIV/AIDS prevention intervention of the U.S. government.


In SA, I'm not convinced that the AIDS epidemic is the apocalyptic catastrophe it was painted as, particularly about ten years ago. Rian Malan wrote a terrific piece in 2001 that doesn't seem to be online (it's in his book Resident Alien, if you're keen for some great writing about SA) about it in which he makes a convincing case that the incidence figures (based on testing of pregnant women who come in to give birth and extrapolated to the general population) are too high because they use a cheap test that easily gives false positives. If you go to a clinic that's the test they run first; if it comes up positive they do a second more expensive test. But for years the Dept of Health only ran the first test for calculating the HIV incidence. Mortality figures bear this out: they show a sharp increase in TB deaths, but nowhere near the scary projections from UNAIDS. The same piece described the sheer amounts of money to be made from AIDS and deplored the fact (rightly) that more humdrum diseases that kill a lot more people, like malaria and typhoid, were getting ignored because they weren't as glamorous or current as AIDS was then.

AIDS activists hate Malan, and apparently the stats in that piece were wrong, so maybe the whole piece is unreliable. I found it well-researched and convincing, though.

Another thing is that deaths from TB are usually used as a proxy figure for deaths from AIDS, but TB has got more deadly so that doesn't hold.

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Re: Wikileaks Haiti: The Aristide Files

Postby Marie Laveau » Fri Aug 12, 2011 8:11 pm

Here is one of the sources I used to refute the Ugandan ABC policy. Again, I"'m not at home so I can't access my files, but this is helpful in understanding the history of the ABC policy in Uganda.

http://www.unrisd.org/80256B3C005BCCF9/(httpAuxPages

It is a U.N. source, but it correlates with all my other research. It's been a long time since I wrote this paper, so I can't remember it verbatim, but there's a lot more to it than just AIDS. And why Museveni and his massively corrupte government continued to accept a massive influx of cash from numerous right-wing groups in the U.S. for a policy they knew was not working, not the least fo which was the fact that there really wasn't a "policy," per se, but just lip music for their donors from the U.S.

It is intersting to note that Uganda was the ONLY third-world country on the planet whose AIDS rates (supposedly) dropped, outside the fundamentalist Muslim countries. And I'm guessing everyone knows how their AIDS rates stayed so low.

So not only was Museveni accept large donations for his ABC initiative, they were lying about the statistics at a time when ALL other government programs were completely ineffective, but the country was also in the midst of a brutal civil war with the northern part of the country. The whole thing was a lie from beginning to end.

And Paul Farmer, in the book I mentioned, does a more than credible job of showing the implicit guilt of U.S. and French corporate interests in the rise of AIDS in Haiti.
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Re: Wikileaks Haiti: The Aristide Files

Postby Marie Laveau » Fri Aug 19, 2011 11:51 am

Here is the book I mentioned earlier:

Randall Robison, An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President

A very good look at the history of Haiti and the continual "intervention" of the U.S. and France.
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Re: Wikileaks Haiti: The Aristide Files

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Aug 22, 2011 9:35 am

a day to remember....bu bye Mr. G


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“The deed is done. Haiti has been raped. The act was sanctioned by the United States, Canada and France.” – Editorial, Jamaica Observer

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Colin Powell is “the most powerful and damaging black to rise to influence in the world in my lifetime.” – TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson

''All the people that supported [Aristide] will be dead in three months.'' – Haiti government attorney Ira Kurzban

The new order congeals like blood on the streets of Port-au-Prince. Haiti’s dance of death begins anew, a convergence of low-life assassins, high-living compradors, preening French imperialists and global American pirates – an unspeakable bacchanal.

The Big Foot of Corporate America

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“I am the chief,” declares Guy Philippe, the 36-year-old, Green Beret-trained, three-time coup-meister and sometime police chief. “The country is in my hands.”

Not really. Haiti is in the same American and French hands that snatched President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the Central African Republic – an involuntary destination on its face, where a French-approved military dictator sits in a palace that he seized from an elected President precisely one year ago. Pleased with the finesse of the "perfect coordination" between Paris and Washington, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin no doubt savors the grotesque, near-symmetric poetry of this joint venture in international piracy, in which Aristide is transported from the site of one coup to another.

“The niceties of democracy were thrown out the window, and the matters of principle so vigorously defended by President Chirac and Foreign Minister de Villepin over Iraq were quickly shunted aside,” said the Jamaica Observer in a March 1 editorial. “And new Canadians went with the flow.” The Caribbean Community must understand, “if they thought otherwise,” that “democratically-elected leaders are easily expendable if they, at a particular time, do not fit the profile in favor with those who are strong and powerful.”

In the shadow of death

Mini-megalomaniac Guy Philippe’s assignment is to liquidate Aristide’s grassroots supporters. In that sense, he is “the chief.” Even so, Philippe overreached on Tuesday when his troops were prevented by U.S. Marines from arresting Prime Minister Yvon Neptune. Earlier that day, Associate Editor Kevin Pina and Andrea Nicastro of the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, interviewed Neptune in his office. With Philippe’s troops massed nearby, Pina and Nicastro worked in haste to elicit the following responses from the Prime Minister:

1. "Even though I am the legal Prime Minister I am a prisoner in my office. That's a fact."

2. "The President called me a few hours before he was taken out of the country and told me, 'Where I am now, I am like a prisoner.'

3. "Whoever has allowed those armed bandits in the opposition to get into Haiti and to sow violence and death, they should be in the position to control them." Asked whether he was referring to the Bush administration the Prime Minister answered: "Statements were made asking the Haitian government to meet certain requirements so that the armed gangs would not be allowed to come into the capital. That statement was made. They wanted us to quiet the demonstrators asking for President Aristide to finish his term. They wanted us to force the to stand down and stop demanding new elections. They wanted that vast majority to remain quiet. They wanted us to tell them to sit down quietly and allow the coup machine to crush them."

4. "Some in the international community don't want Haiti to become a democracy where the majority of the poor have a voice."

5. "The coup machine is in motion because the opposition knows they cannot win elections with President Aristide in the country."

6. "The resignation of the president is not constitutional because he did that under duress and threat."

7. "The chief of the Supreme Court [Boniface Alexander] was brought here into my office by representatives of the international community. I was not invited or present when he was sworn in [as President]."

Notes from Haiti's Killing Fields

The corporate media are in no danger from Guy Philippe, having acted as international public relations agents for the “opposition” during the entire coup-building process. But such immunities do not apply to Kevin Pina – a people’s reporter – who filed this dispatch, Wednesday.

Every night I get frantic calls from friends and contacts I have met and interviewed in the past. In the background I hear the thunder of heavy automatic weapons and the screams of terror as they describe to me the carnage being met upon them. The calls come from places like Bel Air, Cite Soleil, La Saline and Martissaint. The poorest of the poor who supported President Aristide and democracy are being slaughtered by the former military and FRAPH. There is a 6 p.m. curfew imposed by the international forces but it does not seem to apply to these killers.
Naturally, the Haitian press remains silent along with their buddies in the corporate media who are more enamored of the romantic notion of the former killers returning than of the killing itself. I can't blame them though, as the groundwork had already been laid by the Haitian and Washington elites. Haiti’s poor had already been dehumanized in the eyes of the international audience. They are just "chimeres" or violent gangs allied with the president, so we can ignore when they are killed en mass. They deserve it, after all, as payback for having thought they had a place in Haiti's political life. They are only good for two things now, to make money off of or to kill – and who will really know the difference?

No one in these poor neighborhoods believes that President Aristide resigned of his own freewill. The very first day of the coup (let's call it what it really is) they had already begun spreading the rumor that he had been kidnapped. Poor they may be, but stupid they ain't. Now they must suffer for that same intelligence as the world stands by, ignoring their screams of terror.

Philippe’s men chased former Aristide officials to the airport on Wednesday, but were blocked from entering the terminal by U.S. Marines who say their orders now include protecting Haitians from “reprisal” attacks. However, these are the lucky notables with money for a ticket out. The Marines will not protect “Bel Air, Cite Soleil, La Saline and Martissaint.”

The mad dogs unleashed by (the even madder) George Bush and Colin Powell have methodically burned buildings erected to serve the poor. Kevin Pina is a supporter of a school for poor children in Petionville, a relatively rich Port-au-Prince neighborhood – but the poor are everywhere in Haiti. On March 1 Pina wrote:

“I have just received word that the SOPUDEP school, which provides a free education and hot lunch program for over 400 of the poorest children in the community, is being threatened. Opposition thugs and former military have spread word through the neighborhood that they are planning to attack and burn the school very soon. The administration and staff take this threat very seriously and many of them have already gone into hiding until the situation changes. My own ability to help protect the school is very limited given the current situation.”

The SOPUDEP school was organized under Aristide’s National Literacy Project, one of hundreds erected since Aristide’s return from exile in 1994. Like the Haitian folk art gleefully cast into bonfires by Philippe’s men, every vestige of popular initiative and grassroots political expression is marked for destruction. Every man and woman who stands up will be cut down. "Pinochet made Chile what it is,'' Philippe “gushed” when asked his favorite historical figure. “Number 2 on Philippe's list is former US President Ronald Reagan,” the Miami Herald reported.

The executioners plotted for ten years at their U.S.-furnished bases in the Dominican Republic in anticipation of the day when the Haitian nation would be wiped clean of Aristide and his Lavalas movement. History will be rewritten, they vowed; the Gangster-in-Chief will make it so. And he did.

"It's the beginning of a new chapter in” in Haiti’s history, said Bush, as Aristide sat on the plane to Bangui.

French Foreign Minister de Villepin once again exhibited "perfect coordination" with his imperial partner: "Everyone sees quite well that a new page must be opened in Haiti's history."

Powell: Hands-on gangster

African Americans in particular must now face squarely the horrific nature of the current regime in Washington. For reasons of race, proximity, culture and common history, the Haiti atrocity wounds Black America directly. African American leadership has been grievously and cavalierly insulted at every stage of the rolling conspiracy against Haitian democracy.

The administration has given its finger and simultaneously showed its ass to the Black nations of the Caribbean, whom the Bush men hold in no higher regard than bellhops. Colin Powell pretended to embrace a Caricom plan that envisioned President Aristide remaining in power until the end of his constitutional term in 2006; replacement of the prime minister, to be selected by the Haitian government, opposition and the international community; new elections for parliament, whose members’ mandates have expired. Nothing remains of this plan, because it was a monstrous scam from the beginning – Colin Powell’s personal deceit.

Aristide’s response was unequivocal: "I accept the plan, publicly and entirely... In one word, yes." It was the right answer; but Powell wasn’t asking an honest question. He is a professional prevaricator – please, let us no longer call him a diplomat.

Unlike Donald Rumsfeld’s closely held Iraq operation, the rape of Haiti was Powell’s hands-on criminal enterprise. On Monday, February 23, Powell caused his spokesman to assure concerned Black lawmakers and world opinion that the Secretary was standing firm against opposition demands for Aristide’s physical removal; that the U.S. supported the Caricom agreement. "We went back at them,” said Gonzalo Gallegos. Powell “emphasized how good this was. He made clear to them that this was the best thing they had going." What is now perfectly clear is that there was never any U.S. intention for Aristide to remain on Haitian soil. Powell assured the Haitian elite of this fact, and prepped them to reject the Caricom plan, thus presenting the planet with the farce that a gaggle of Third World businessmen were thwarting the will of the United States.

Bush and his confederates lied in the faces of massed Black congressional representatives in the days leading up to Aristide’s departure (see “US House Members to Bush, Powell: Don’t Usurp Aristide’s Power,” February 26), with assurances from the President that, "We still hope to be able to achieve a political settlement between the current government and the rebels." We now know that the Bush men and France were even then seeking "perfect coordination" in removing Aristide. Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice sat like bookmarks at Bush’s side as he lied to nineteen Black members of Congress.

Are these two conspirators fit to speak at any Black gathering, ever again in life? Who in the Black community will debase their organizations with the presence of such “role models?” An invitation to Powell or Rice should be viewed as proof of a moral deficit on the part of the inviter.

‘Nonsense’ and ‘conspiracy theories’

”The constitution is the guarantee for life and peace. The constitution should not sink in the blood of the Haitian people. That's why, if tonight my resignation is the decision that can avoid a bloodbath, I consent to leave with hope there will be life, not death." – President Aristide’s purported letter of resignation, alleged to have been written sometime Saturday night, February 28.

The multi-racial Bush lie-machine and its agents in mass media had only just begun to heap vicious calumnies on Black leadership. The world’s most famous liars – the fantasists of phantom Weapons of Mass Destruction – would call into question the veracity of Black America’s most outspoken and respected voices. Dutifully, the corporate media took their cues from the liars and embellished on these signals, in a brazen effort to make it appear that African Americans had gone crazy.

On the Monday morning following Aristide’s purported voluntary exile, Los Angeles Congresswoman Maxine Waters called Democracy Now! to report that the Haitian leader had not resigned, but had been kidnapped. “He is in the Central Republic of Africa at a place called the Palace of the Renaissance, and he’s not sure if that’s a house or a hotel or what it is and he is surrounded by military,” Waters told host Amy Goodman.

“It’s like in jail, he said. He said that he was kidnapped; he said that he was forced to leave Haiti. He said that the American embassy sent the diplomats; he referred to them as, to his home where they was lead by Mr. Moreno. And I believe that Mr. Moreno is a deputy chief of staff at the embassy in Haiti and other diplomats, and they ordered him to leave. They said you must go NOW….
“You have no choice, you must go and if you don’t you will be killed and many Haitians will be killed. We are planning with Mr. De filliped to come into Puerto Rico. He will not be alone he will come with American military and you will not survive, you will be killed. You’ve got to go now!”

TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson, now living in the Caribbean British Commonwealth nation of St. Kitts, is a familiar voice to the Aristide household. Robinson spoke with the Aristides as often as ten times a day as the U.S.-backed bands tightened their noose on the capital. However, Robinson was unable to reach the President or his wife, Mildred, on Saturday evening and night. Something was amiss, he thought. Then Robinson got the call from Bangui. “He did not resign. He did not resign,” Robinson told Amy Goodman, confirming Rep. Water’s earlier account.

”He was kidnapped and all of the circumstances seem to support his assertion. Had he resigned, we wouldn't need blacked out windows and blocked communications and military taking him away at gunpoint. Had he resigned, he would have been happy to leave the country. He was not.”

Robinson reported that he had worked the phones to find out the State Department’s story and been told that South Africa had refused Aristide asylum. Robinson spoke with South Africa’s foreign minister, who said that Aristide had not asked for asylum. (Of course he hadn’t – he had not planned to be leaving the country!)

“So, you see the State Department is telling an interested public, including members of the congress, that South Africa refused asylum. The State Department knows better. They know that President Aristide was not allowed to request asylum from South Africa or anybody else because he was not allowed to make any phone calls before they left Haiti, during the flight, and beyond.”

Colin Powell’s Big Lie was unraveling – and now it emerged that the Secretary of State had taken upon himself the role of Godfather. Ron Dellums, the distinguished former Congressman from the San Francisco Bay area who worked as a lobbyist for Aristide’s government, got a call from the Head-Negro-In-Charge on Saturday, warning in no uncertain terms that gunmen were coming to kill Aristide on Sunday morning. The U.S., said Powell, would not lift a finger to stop them. When the Americans come to call, Aristide must leave with them.

It is a mind-boggling measure of the Bush Pirates’ ferocious lawlessness that Powell would personally initiate the overt, criminally culpable act in the kidnapping of a head of state. This aspect of the crime alone should send him to The Hague.

The news had a disorienting effect on corporate newsrooms. How could they bury such accusations, now circling the globe via the Internet? Just as Maxine Waters was telling CNN of another call from the Central African Republic, this time from the Haitian First Lady, Donald Rumsfeld stepped to the microphone at the Pentagon. The Defense Secretary feigned surprise, actually chuckling at the very idea of a presidential kidnapping. "I don't believe that's true that he is claiming that. I just don't know that that's the case. I'd be absolutely amazed if that were the case."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan derided Waters and Robinson: "That's nonsense. Conspiracy theories do nothing to help the Haitian people move forward to a better, more free and more prosperous future."

That’s all the corporate newsreaders and wisecrackers needed to hear. A CNN anchor speculated that Aristide was “fabricating revisionist history on the fly,” with the transparent inference that Rep. Waters was a dupe or liar, herself. “Do you think we would make that up?” the Congresswoman asked, shocked and offended.

The same trained corporate seal then presented clumsily leading questions to one of the usual “security experts” that bounce around branded newsrooms spouting nonsense all day. Waters’ tale of diplomats accompanying U.S. troops to take Aristide away was – ludicrous on its face. “You wouldn’t have diplomats side by side with the military, right?” said the faux newsperson. It couldn’t have happened that way, the “expert” assured her.

Once the White House and Rumsfeld had spoken, the conversations with Aristide became “alleged phone calls,” and remained so until Aristide confirmed the events in his own voice. Aristide had asked Waters and Robinson to “tell the world it was a coup!” Corporate media tried their best to discredit the messengers and the victim.

Agents of corporate consensus

The Bush men’s incessant rampages against reality are bringing their corporate media partners into disrepute right along with them. As we wrote in ’s January 29 Cover Story, “The Awesome Destructive Power of the Corporate Media”:

In the past year we have seen consciousness-shaking evidence of the corporate media’s implacable hostility to any manifestation of resistance to the current order. Media rushed to embed themselves in the US war machine’s Iraq invasion, and collaborated to actively suppress public awareness of a full-blown movement against the war. Hundreds of thousands of protestors were made to disappear in plain sight. Corporate media conspired – which is what businessmen in boardrooms do as a matter of daily routine – not only to shield the public from dissenting opinions (their usual assignment), but to drastically diminish, distort and even erase huge gatherings that were profoundly newsworthy by any rational standard.

In the case of Aristide’s kidnapping – and that is the objective name of the crime, since he left in the coercive custody of the U.S. under threat of death from none other than the Secretary of State – the media collaborated with the perpetrators to justify the “disappearing” of a head of state. What shall we call such media? “Lackey” and “stooge” don’t work. The terms connote subservient status, and a kind of haplessness. But there is nothing hapless or subservient about Big Media, who are, through their interlocking ownerships and financial and directorship ties “full members of the presiding corporate pantheon.”

“Agents” is the most accurate term we can think of, although we invite other suggestions. The corporate media act as agents for the corporate consensus on the way the world should work. Far from being “stooges” or “lackeys,” corporate media frame reality in ways that leave the people few options but to accept the corporate consensus. Like an army, they dominate and overwhelm the national conversation. In addition, as a social force – possibly the most important social force in the American cultural “bubble” – corporate media are profoundly racist, upholding collective white privilege as well as corporate dominance.

It is useful to compare Big Media’s framing of contemporary Haitian realities with their journalistic forbearer’s treatment of a previous U.S. occupation, 1915 – 1934. In “The Tragedy of Haiti” chapter of Noam Chomsky’s 1993 book, The Year 501, the scholar draws upon the work of renowned historian John Blassingame, editor of the Papers of Frederick Douglass.

Through the bloodiest years of the occupation, the media were silent or supportive. The New York Times index has no entries for Haiti for 1917-1918. In a press survey, John Blassingame found "widespread editorial support" for the repeated interventions in Haiti and the Dominican Republic from 1904 to 1919, until major atrocity stories surfaced in 1920, setting off congressional inquiry. Haitians and Dominicans were described as "coons," "mongrels," "unwholesome," "a horde of naked niggers," the Haitians even more "retrograde" than the Dominicans. They needed "energetic Anglo-Saxon influence." "We are simply going in there...to help our black brother put his disorderly house in order," one journal wrote. Furthermore, The US had a right to intervene to protect "our peace and safety" (New York Times).
Times editors lauded the "unselfish and helpful" attitude that the US had always shown, now once again as it responded "in a fatherly way" as Haiti "sought help here." Our "unselfish intervention has been moved almost exclusively by a desire to give the benefits of peace to people tormented by repeated revolutions," with no thought of "preferential advantages, commercial or otherwise," for ourselves. "The people of the island should realize that [the US government] is their best friend." The US sought only to ensure that "the people were cured of the habit of insurrection and taught how to work and live"; they "would have to be reformed, guided and educated," and this "duty was undertaken by the United States." There is a further benefit for our "black brother": "To wean these peoples away from their shot-gun habit of government is to safeguard them against our own exasperation," which might lead to further intervention. "The good-will and unselfish purposes of our own government" are demonstrated by the consequences, the editors wrote in 1922, when they were all too apparent and the Marine atrocities had already aroused a storm of protest.

It is estimated that 15,000 Haitians were slaughtered during the 19-year occupation. The New York Times and its fellows blamed the carnage on the innate barbarity of the Haitians. Today, the corporate media blather about “cycles of violence” in Haiti – as if the victims were both cause and effect of the phenomenon. Not a single member of the corporate media questions the “unselfish purposes of our own government,” which could not possibly be guilty of crimes against humanity and world order.

The corporate media employ a very simple yet devastatingly effective trick when “fabricating” their own “revisionist history on the fly” – they “forget” every previously reported fact and occurrence that does not jibe with the official line. Thus, most of what we know about disbanded Haitian army and secret police activities in the Dominican Republic during the post-1994 decade is derived from the corporate media, themselves – yet these same outlets uniformly excised these facts from the record once the contra invasion began in early February.

‘Disappeared’ facts

For nearly a year there had been a steady stream of U.S. press reports of frenetic activity among exiled Haitian killers in the Dominican Republic. These reports appeared in the most influential American newspapers. For example, on May 15, 2003, soon after began its collaboration with Haiti-based reporter Kevin Pina, an AP story served as the bases for the following item in our Issues section titled, “US Plots Regime Change in Haiti.”

A May 10 Associated Press report tends to confirm that Haiti's armed opposition operates with near-impunity in the Dominican Republic. Under pressure from the Haitian government, authorities on the Dominican side of the border arrested and then released five men in connection with the attack on the hydroelectric plant:

The man Haitian authorities have accused of plotting to overthrow Jean-Bertrand Aristide's government says he supports a coup but isn't planning one.

Guy Philippe told The Associated Press that he wasn't plotting Aristide's ouster but that the time for a peaceful solution has passed. He wouldn't say, however, whether he would take up arms in the future. Dominican authorities released Philippe, a 35-year-old former Haitian police chief known for his flashy cars, expensive taste and strong-armed tactics to battle crime in the impoverished Caribbean nation, Thursday after finding no evidence he and four others were conspiring against the Haitian government. Haitian authorities told their Dominican counterparts Philippe and others were plotting against the Haitian government from neighboring Dominican Republic.

"I would support a coup," Philippe said in Spanish during an interview in a Santo Domingo hotel. "We have to get rid of the dictator." ...
Declining to say how he makes a living or what he does to spend his time in the Dominican Republic, Philippe said the international community needed to do more to push Aristide from power, but he said he would not support an armed invasion.

On the day Philippe was detained on the Dominican side of the border, police raided the house of Port-au-Prince mayoral candidate Judith Roy of the Convergence opposition. They claimed to have "found assault weapons, ammunitions, and plans to attack the National Palace and Aristide's suburban residence," said the Associated Press. Haitian authorities say Roy is close to Philippe, the former police chief of Cap Haitian.

The pace of the Haitian contra buildup escalated as the year progressed, as did the very public meetings between the International Republican Institute, Bush administration officials and Haitian ex-military in the Dominican Republic. “Chief” Guy Philippe and his cohorts’ invasion preparations were common knowledge, and certainly well-known to the American press on both sides of the island of Hispaniola.

When armed attacks began against police stations in the north of Haiti, the U.S. press noted that the fighters were a mix of gang members and former soldiers that had relocated to the Dominican Republic after President Aristide returned in 1994. On February 15, newspapers across the U.S. carried Associated Press reports that “reinforcements” had arrived to bolster the “rebels” in Gonaives. In fact, the new guys included elements of the exile army’s high command:

Haitian rebels seeking to topple the president brought in reinforcements from the neighboring Dominican Republic, including the exiled former leader of 1980s death squads and a former police chief accused of fomenting a coup, witnesses said, as police fled two more northern towns.
Twenty commandos arrived Saturday, led by Louis-Jodel Chamblain, a former Haitian soldier who headed army death squads in 1987 and a militia known as the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti, or FRAPH, which killed and maimed scores of people in the early 1990s.

The “former police chief” is Guy Philippe.

So the origins of the “rebel” army were no secret to the corporate media. Yet on Sunday, as Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s flying prison made its way across the Atlantic Ocean, the major media all ran political obituaries, “fact” pages and timelines that made no mention whatever of the Dominican roots of the month-long fighting. It was as if the “insurgency” sprang from the soil, or was a natural expression of the fratricidal proclivities of the Haitian people.

The purpose of the sudden, universal corporate media amnesia is simple: to exclude from public debate facts that would implicate the United States and its Dominican allies in the overthrow of Aristide. Reality was “disappeared.” The Americans were once again on a reluctant “rescue mission.” There was to be no questioning of the “unselfish purposes of our own government.”

‘Crazy’ Aristide

The corporate media will doubtless “forget” that they acted as agents for a discredited CIA disinformation campaign against Aristide during the deposed President’s U.S. exile, 1991 – 94. Leila McDowell-Head’s Washington, D.C. public relations firm represented Aristide during that period. “They clearly launched a campaign to paint him as psychologically unbalanced,” she told . “An investigation showed the charges were specious and baseless, but not before the corporate media had a field day with it. But I think we’ll see a reprise of this disinformation campaign.”

It’s already begun. The toad-like Deputy Secretary of State, Roger Noriega, this week appeared on Ted Koppel’s ABC Nightline to slander Aristide as an “erratic and unreliable” personality who made up the kidnapping story. “He’s demonstrated within the last few hours that he’s not a responsible person,” said Jesse Helms’ former chief of staff. Having somehow failed to kill Aristide, they will assassinate his sanity.

Noreiga and Condoleezza Rice have been saying the same things for years about Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, another president whose constituency is based among the poor. Anti-government demonstrators have begun carrying signs reading, “Bye bye Aristide, Chavez you're next.” Unlike the former priest, Chavez answers his critics in kind. Commenting on the advisors that urged Bush to instigate the 2002 coup attempt against his government, Chavez told a roaring crowd: “He was an asshole to believe them.”
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Wikileaks Haiti: The Aristide Files

Postby conniption » Thu Jul 08, 2021 7:10 pm

Fast forward to 2021:



Jovenel Moïse Dead: Haitian President Assassinated, Plunging Country into New Political Crisis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-UgXL8BBa0
Jul 7, 2021
Democracy Now!
Haiti is reeling from a new crisis after President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in an attack on his home in the outskirts of Port-au-Prince early Wednesday. In a statement, Haitian Prime Minister Claude Joseph said “a group of unidentified individuals” attacked the private residence of the president, killing him and injuring the first lady. Moïse, who had led Haiti since 2017, was accused of orchestrating a coup to stay in power beyond February 7, when his term officially ended. For months Haitians have staged large protests against Moïse demanding he leave office, but Moïse clung to power with support from the Biden administration, which backed his claims that his term should end next year. Dahoud Andre, a longtime Haitian community activist and member of the Committee to Mobilize Against Dictatorship in Haiti, says rumors are flying about who could be behind the killing. “As of now, we have no clue where this assassination came from,” Andre says, adding that “the Haitian people loathed Jovenel Moïse” and describing him as a “tool” of the United States. We also speak with Kim Ives, editor of Haiti Liberté, who says the assailants appear to have been well resourced in their attack. “Clearly this was a fairly sophisticated operation,” Ives says.



RT
(embedded links)

The West’s crocodile tears over the assassination of Haiti’s corrupt leader reveal the reality of life as a US vassal state

Tom Fowdy
is a British writer and analyst of politics and international relations with a primary focus on East Asia.

8 Jul, 2021

The 11 million inhabitants of this tiny Caribbean nation are wracked by extreme poverty, inequality and disorder because that’s the way Washington likes to keep it.

The President of Haiti, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated this week. Four of the alleged mercenaries responsible were later hunted down and killed themselves. His murder provoked outcry in the West. But why did this happen? And why should we care about a tiny and seemingly inconsequential Caribbean nation?

It might have come as a surprise to some, not least because the mainstream media have ignored the build-up that led to the attack. The answer, though, is quite simple: Haiti is a political basketcase, its 11 million people have had enough, and Moïse has been an incompetent US-backed puppet, a quasi-authoritarian leader who rigged an election and incurred the wrath of a nation afflicted by extreme poverty, inequality and disorder, leaving a that has been historically exacerbated by American interference.

If you’ve heard of Haiti, it’s seldom been for the right reasons. The two things its name conjures in Western minds are the practice of voodoo and a catastrophic earthquake in 2010 that left up to 300,000 dead. It’s a very unlucky place. It’s one of the poorest countries in the world, and the poorest in the Western hemisphere, 59% of its population living on just $2 a day. Things have long passed breaking point and riots have been a regular occurrence for the past three years, leaving hundreds dead. We can’t condone the assassination of any leader, but Haitians are arguably one of the most disadvantaged peoples in the world.

Haiti is a tiny nation located on the island of Hispaniola in the West Indies. Its tragic history is a story of colonialism, slavery, revolt and then subjugation again. One of the first places to be reached by European colonialists, it first became a dominion of Spain and then France, which amassed an enormous African slave population in the territory to build the lucrative sugar trade.

Also on rt.com Multiple gunmen killed & arrested in firefight with suspected assassins of Haitian President Jovenel Moise

On the back of this enslaved labour, it became a place of extreme wealth inequality, before the slaves revolted in the late 18th century under the leadership of Toussaint Louverture, dubbed the Napoléon Noir or Black Spartacus, and enacted the Haitian Revolution – the first black-led, anti-slavery uprising in history.

While the new nation was never quite stable and had a tremulous relationship with what is now the Dominican Republic, which it once ruled, there are three words with which we can sum up aspects of its current predicament: the Monroe Doctrine. America’s foreign policy, established in 1823, ensured it maintained dominance over the entire Western hemisphere – whatever the cost to the countries subjected to it.

When it came to Haiti, Washington took this to a new extreme. Fearing the influence of Germany on the island, the United States invaded and occupied the country for its own pleasure in 1915 and kept it that way for 20 years.

They left eventually, with strings attached, of course. In securing their dominance over Latin American and Caribbean nations, the US has always sought to put and maintain in power a very small, elitist and ultra-wealthy class who maintain that leadership against the bulk of the country’s population.

Haiti has always been dominated by a small, pro-West class known as ‘mulattos’. Although it’s a term that traditionally refers to skin colour, it’s really about social class. The mulattos comprise 5% of the country’s population and have dominated Haiti for decades as US clients, including through periods of outright dictatorship, including the notorious Duvalier dynasty, up until the 1980s.

These extreme divides between rich and poor, and oligarchic rule coupled with rampant political instability and unrest, has hindered Haiti’s progress, yet ultimately created a status quo favourable to the United States. There are other factors that have compounded its situation, including immense natural disasters such as the earthquake of 2010, frequent destructive tropical storms, chronic-disease outbreaks and more. While, today, the country is on paper a democracy, this obviously counts for very little from the perspective of ordinary people.

This is why Moïse’s assassination was not a surprise. To those ordinary people, his regime symbolised corruption, authoritarianism, chaos, the crushing costs of living and extreme dissatisfaction.

Yet, ironically, the Monroe Doctrine has played another role too. The country’s current political crisis was triggered in 2019 by a US regime change effort in nearby Venezuela – a country on which Haiti was dependent for cheap and ready fuel supplies. Nicolás Maduro’s state had given Port-au-Prince loans to buy its oil, but the country’s leadership embezzled the money instead.

Then, when the US decided to attempt a regime change in Venezuela and sanctioned its oil, Haiti found itself with neither any oil nor any money to buy it from elsewhere. This created fuel shortages and sent prices soaring by 50%. The fuel taxes proposed by the government to try to recoup the money triggered riots, which escalated into broader anger about living standards. In the ensuing violence, foreign embassies were attacked.

Yet did the Western media cover these events? Scantly. The Haiti government proceeded to murder journalists who opposed it. They even cancelled an election. The US imposed sanctions over such a decision in Hong Kong last year. This time? Tumbleweed.

Also on rt.com ‘State of siege’: Haitian PM declares nationwide state of emergency following president’s assassination

What are the key takeaways here? While assassination is always wrong, Haitians are an impoverished people pushed to the absolute brink. As the US and its allies send their condolences to the Haitian government over the killing of Moïse, it should be made clear above all that this was a leader and a regime despised by most of the population and for a litany of reasons.

Yet, for the US, this failed state has been kept that way for generations out of political convenience, illustrating how Washington’s rhetoric of human rights is habitually ignored when the abuses are ongoing in a country that’s its subordinate, and how democracy alone is utterly meaningless when that country’s population is locked in severe poverty.

It should be noted, finally, that Haiti has no ties with China and still aligns with Taiwan, and has been signing up to anti-Beijing statements at the UN – something that makes no sense for an impoverished Latin American nation but point instead to its position as America’s vassal.

For the US, Taiwan and others, it’s very simple: because Haiti is broke and desperate, it serves our purposes, therefore there’s no need for us to fix it.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/528708-haiti-p ... tion-west/
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Re: Wikileaks Haiti: The Aristide Files

Postby Harvey » Thu Jul 29, 2021 6:02 am

Haitians are very well informed and seem quite unenthusiastic about the prospect of another US occupation.

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