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*************************************** Answers to media questions about
Haiti
by Èzili Dantò, Esq.
Chair, The Haitian Lawyers Leadership
March 2, 2004
1. Why did the Bush administration
consider the removal of Aristide to be a U.S. national interest?
Aristide had eliminated the Haitian
army, which traditionally protected the interests of the right wing
business elites in Haiti. Their interests are U.S. big business interests.
Also, Aristide refused to fully implement Washington's neo-liberal economic
policies when he returned to Haiti in 1994. Also, Haiti's cheap labor
force, whether actually used or not, can be used as a threat - as leverage
- against other labor forces. When the Chinese or Koreans unionize,
then all you need is the threat to move to cheaper labor in Haiti to
put their demands in check and save millions of dollars. President Aristide
had raised, more than doubled the minimum wage in Haiti, not once but
twice. The first time in 1995 he raised it from 18 gourdes to 36 gourdes
per day for an 8-hour day. And, in 2003 he again doubled the minimum
wage from 36
to 70 gourdes (or about $1.60) a day, despite the strong disapproval
of Haiti’s business elites and their US contractors.
Because of inflation, the $1.60 a day, was lower than what the minimum
wage had been 10 years earlier.
[ Under President Jean Bertrand Aristide and the Lavalas governments,
the life,
liberty and property of the Haitian masses were elevated
and more valued than at any other time since the first coup d'etat in
1806 where the sons of France assassinated Haiti’s founding father.
For, the minimum wage was raised, more
Haitian schools were built in Haiti than in the entire previous
200 years of Haitian history, the people were educated by the Liv Blan
as to the resources of Haiti and their right to this property and mineral
riches and oil, (See Haiti's
Riches being fleece under cover of this UN occupation and puppet Haitian
government by foreign companies) Also, under Pres. Aristide,
the language of Haitians, the Kreyòl language was made an official
language of the Haitian state, Vodun was made an official religion,
France was asked to pay back the Independence
Debt and literacy rates went up by more than 30%. To take
and control Haiti's life, liberty and property are the reasons for the
Bush 2004 coup d'etat/UN occupation. The Bush 2004 coup d'etat/Regime
change and subsequent UN occupation is based on enslavement (taking
of Haitian life
and labor),
murder (rule by force, incarceration,
endless debt and degrading the environment) and theft (stealing the
people of Haiti's
mineral/gold/copper/ coal/oil/gas reserves and other riches).
See, the map from the "Liv Ban" from Pres. Aristide political
party which catalogues Haiti's riches. President Aristide’s political
party, put together in this “Liv Blan” book a plan of public/private
partnership to lift Haiti out of poverty using Haiti's own natural resources
- Go to: A
map of some of Haiti's mining resources, Oil
in Haiti - Economic Reasons for
the UN/US occupation,
and CKUT
Interview (in English - 34:03) with Ezili Dantò on Mining of
Haiti Resources and Riches].
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Ezili's Note, 2005:
Paying Haitians a paltry (70 gourds) - $1.60 (depending on exchange
rates) for an 8-hour day was deemed too much by these repugnant
international business folks in Haiti. So, under the pretext that
they had the best interests of the Haitian poor at heart and that
Aristide was a vile dictator responsible for massive Haitian murders
and international crimes, sweatshop kingpin and US citizen Andre
Apaid, Jr (Group 184), and other such US-protected business elites
in Haiti, gathered together with the Bush-the-Junior's Neocons
(with the complicity of the international corporate barons who
now own the mainstream media and major "news" outlets)
to ouster the Aristide/Neptune government and then imposed their
own Boca Raton Prime Minister from Florida. Some of the first
acts of this imposed Bush Haiti regime in 2004 were aimed at decimating
Haiti's reforms made under President Aristide and implementing
a neoliberal economic, otherwise known to Haitians as the "death
plan." Under the cover and back-up of thousands of UN guns
- who acted as the military proxies for the Washington ruling
elites and to disguise the colonial invasions there soley to legitimize
the 2004 Bi-centennial coup d’etat in Haiti - Bush's Haiti
regime immediately imprisoned, forced into exile or slaughtered
all the Lavalas supporters in sight, gave three years tax break
to Haiti's business class, dropped the Haitian demand that France
pay the $22billion Independence Debt it extorted from the Haitian
people at gun point, cut the minimum wage in half, gave ten years
back pay to the Haitian army soldiers demobilized by President
Aristide back in 1995, signed Haiti to endless new IFM/World bank
debts; proceeded to fleece Haiti of its
gold mines, uranium, copper, emeralds, gas reserves, its iridium,
underwater treasures, et al and
to set in motion the wheel for such continued massive "privatization"
of Haiti's remaining state enterprises and country's assets.
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2. In your opinion, what was the involvement
of the United States in the removal of Aristide? (Possibly discuss how
the U.S. withheld humanitarian funds and why, etc.)
The U.S. financed the first 1991-1994
coup d'ètat against Aristide. They returned him after three years
to stem the flow of Haitian refugees landing in Florida, and incarcerated
in the offshore U.S. penal colony known as Guantanamo Bay.
The U.S. continued their destabilization
campaign against the Haitian peoples' struggle towards development by
forcing Aristide, as a condition of return, to give asylum to the coup
leaders and integrate high FADH and FRAPH officials back into the new
civilian police. These corrupt people led to more corruption and made
it even more unwieldy for Aristide to clean up past corruption or develop
a Haitian justice apparatus to crack down on corruption and bring people
to justice.
Then the U.S. promptly began to try
to turn the new innocent police recruits against Aristide. The U.S.
rep running the center quit because of the interference. The U.S. did
not want eliminated the old Haitian army it held under its thumb to
do its bidding.
Guy Philippe, for instance, trained
by the U.S. Special Forces in 1994 in Equador, was put in, by Aristide,
as chief of police of the North at U.S. insistence. Guy Philippe later
led three coup attempts. The first one against the Preval administration
and two, one in 2000 and the other in 2001, against Aristide. Many people
died. The U.S. is also implicated in these previous Guy Philippe attempts.
The fact that Guy Philippe could not have freely entered Port-au-Prince
in February, 2004, despite the opposition, without the U.S.
Marines first removing Aristide is testament to Aristide's
popularity and solidarity with the Haitian people.
The U.S.
conducted the coup d'ètat against Aristide on Feb.
29, 2004, themselves. Louis Jodel Chamblain and Jean Tatoune, both of
FRAPH, and part of what CNN calls a "rebel force," are convicted of
massacres during the first (1991-1994) CIA-sponsored coup d'ètat
against President Aristide. The U.S. played a pivotal role in helping
Louis Jodel Chamblain flee Haiti and get asylum in the Dominican Republic.
All three - Chamblain, Tatoune and Guy Philippe - are CIA assets who
refused, like Toto Constant, to be subject to Haitian criminal laws
and its courts of justice and got away with this because of their U.S.
intelligence and diplomatic connections.
Nine hundred (900) U.S. soldiers patrol
the Dominican Republic with the Dominican Guard. Yet, on Feb. 5, 2004,
convicted murderers Chamblain and Philippe managed to cross the border
into Haiti with U.S. weaponry such as M16s, M60s, armored vehicles,
grenade launchers, etc.
The United States DEA
charged Guy Philippe as a drug trafficker. Today he walks side by side
with U.S. Marines in Port-au-Prince while the constitutionally elected
Haitian president is flown out of Port-au-Prince under heavy U.S. coercion,
if not outright
gunpoint by U.S Marines.
Toto Constant, FRAPH founder, to whom
the U.S. gave asylum in Queens, N.Y., while indefinitely detaining his
Haitian victims on Guantanamo Bay and other INS holding pens, is now
reportedly back in Haiti.*(See update, Aug.
2007)
Guy Philippe and his gang's first order
of business after they were escorted into Port-au-Prince by U.S. soldiers
was to "liberate" 2,000 prisoners - murderers and felons - in the Haitian
National Penitentiary, including Proper
Avril, and unleash them onto Haitian society.
Today, the disinformation about Aristide's
lack of popularity and lies about Haiti being more corrupt under Aristide/Preval/Aristide
then under the old Duvalierist guard, which is now back, is fairly visible,
and in graphic, bloody technicolor. But it's too late. All the small
successes of Haitian democracy since 1990 have been trashed in one
fell Feb. 29, 2004, U.S. coup d'ètat swoop.
Aristide built more schools in Haiti
during his term than had been built in the entirety of Haiti's history
under the old guard. Now that old guard is retaking power thanks to
10 years of U.S. destabilization, then outright coup d'ètat.
They could not have won without the Feb. 29 shock and awe, dead-of-night
campaign, against Aristide and his innocent wife.
Who is keeping the marginal flame and
movement towards structural peace alive now in Haiti? Aristide eliminated
the old army, helped bring illiteracy from 85 percent down to 48 percent,
improved the health system, built public parks, started to decentralize
power by establishing local governance through town meetings and local
town governance, more so than any of the old guard for the almost 200
years it was in charge.
This done despite the U.S. embargo,
obstructions and extortion, which forced Aristide to pay the IMF/World
Bank $30 million in loan interest due from old dictatorship governments.
Loans that were never requested back from the Duvaliers, who are now
in golden parachute retirement on the Riviera, or Raoul Cedras, now
in Panama, or Guy Philippe, the real beneficiaries of U.S. aid in Haiti.
In addition, the old army was not demilitarized and was shadowing Aristide's
every move.
The Haitian people's daily struggles
were made even harder by the U.S. financing of opposition groups to
Aristide who relentlessly challenged his legitimacy and exercised, with
the help of the IRI, USAID, NED, the U.S. Embassy, OAS and the European
Union, a virtual de facto veto of any legitimate Haitian government
policies, plans and reforms.
Most notably, they blocked every effort
to hold parliamentary elections, even though this tiny opposition, according
to COHA and U.S.'s own polling, make up less than 4 percent of the Haitian
electorate.
Despite all this, President Aristide
was able to keep his popular support, so his opponents simultaneously
ran a media disinformation campaign fabricating that Aristide had lost
popular support and that those who supported him where "thugs." That
is equivalent to saying that a little less than 8.5 million Black people
are thugs.
The Haitian people have been brutalized,
beaten and devastated by U.S. power for a century, beginning in 1914
when the U.S took over from the French, by "helping" to refinance "for
Haiti" the 1825 French indemnity, and then invaded Haiti for missing
payments to protect U.S. bank interests, fleecing dry the Haitian national
gold reserves. France, of course, is helping the U.S. to depose Aristide
because he has requested their repayment of $22 billion.
3. What type of relationship do you
believe exists between the Democratic Platform and the rebel army?
There is nothing "democratic" about
the old guard. They are oppressors, who practice social exclusion and
apartheid akin to the KKK. They simply refused to be subject to paying
taxes or put under any Haitian law. Group 184 was created in a meeting
in the Dominican Republic, which gives shelter, arms and training camps
to ex-Haitian soldiers and FRAPH murderers. Guy
Philippe has said publicly, the Haitian business elite financially
supports him.
4. How involved do you believe Aristide
was in the various pro-Aristide groups that used violence against Haitian
opposition groups, such as the chimeres, etc.?
Haiti was not demilitarized when Aristide
returned in 1994. Old enemies of the people were allowed to keep their
guns and have a space in Aristide's government. It was impossible then
for Aristide to tell certain Lavalas opportunists to put down their
guns when FRAPH/FADH were still armed. Then, the jostling for turf just
went underground but was nonetheless alive and well.
Aristide tried to negotiate some of
these people out of Haiti and some into harmless position. The corruption
continued. Besides, corruption was endemic before Aristide took over
leadership.
No democracy in the world does not
have corruption in it - as we well know in the U.S. But Aristide's problems
where exacerbated, since the Haitian people didn't have a justice system
capable of holding powerful or monied prisoners.
Amiot Metayer, for instance, a Lavalas
hero, was eventually put in jail. But he broke out and resented the
punishment and turned, joining Jean Tatoune, convicted of a massacre
in Amiot Metayer's own Gonaive and further complicated the government's
crackdown. Butler
and Amiot Metayer were always playing off both sides and were simply
mercenaries.
Aristide cannot be blamed for people's
criminal predilections. For no one who is a real revolutionary for Haitian
justice and empowerment would EVER throw their lot in with murderers
like Guy Philippe, Jean Tatoune, Louis Jodel Chamblain, or the old Duvalierist
guards. Period, no question marks.
All this slaughtering happening in
Haiti today could have been prevented if the U.S. had really wanted
to help democracy back in 1994 and given the Haitian people the police
help President Aristide asked for to demilitarize the whole of Haiti,
and if the U.S. had just supported, or simply had not obstructed the
constitutionally elected president and Haitian governments. Now the
old guard with the U.S. guns has won the fight that's always been going
on.
The people are back in hiding. Democracy
is dead in Haiti, flown out when the U.S. took away Haiti's peacekeeper.
To date, President Aristide has survived 14 assassination attempts.
Today, because of U.S./Euro control in Haiti with their FRAPH/FAHD enforcers
and because of their neo-colonialist, pre-emptive regime-change policymakers
and diplomats throughout the world, President Aristide's safety as well
as the safety of the majority of Haitian people, both in the U.S. and
in Haiti, are right now in serious jeopardy.
Email Èzili Dantò at erzilidanto@aol.com.
***
(See: Haiti
as Target Practice: How the US Press Missed the Story
by Heather Williams - Counterpunch, March 1, 2004)
***
Operation Sweatshop
Jean-Bertrand Aristide's move to raise Haiti's minimum wage was the
last straw for American corporations and elitist U.S. factions.
********
Expose
the lies
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*Èzili Dantò's
August 2007 note: Media
Lies and the Real Haiti News,August
12, 2007
These media lies, "...it's
that old ripped yarn, spinning played out stories in different colors
when not flying on Coast Guard boats sailing our ancestor's tear-filled
sound waves..."Red, Black
& Moonlight - Carnegie
Hall performance clip
From the beginning
of the 2004 foreign intervention in Haiti to the UN occupation under
the Preval/Alexis government, Ezili's Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
("HLLN") has given an international voice
to the Haitian struggle that was not on the terrain before, debunking
the stereotype and view of Haiti as a place doomed by Vodun and cyclical
patterns of political instability initiated by violent and corrupt Haitians.
We have shown how simplistic, racist, misleading and terrorizing the
cliches ingrained in people's minds when they think of Haiti are. We
have shown, over and over again, that Haiti, a Black country existing
within a hostile and racist American Mediterranean is poor because it
is deliberately made so and kept contained in poverty by the US-Euro
powers who initiate,
finance and maintain civil unrest, injustice, corruption, chaos and
political instability in Haiti in order for their economic
hit men, defense cartels, fraternity of corporate, government,
and banking heads and various "donors"
to make quick riches restoring order and incessantly "saving Haiti."
(Debt
Breeds Dependency Equals Foreign & Corporate Domination
by Èzili Dantò, January 4, 2005
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/payingthugs.html ; Haitian
Nights, Again; Tyrants
and Despots dressed up as "peacemakers," and "police"
cleansing Haiti of "Bandits"
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/despots.html#despots
).
An array of self-serving, white-world international organizations, foreign
diplomats,
neocolonial journalists, institutionalized
NGOs, governmental
leeches ("experts") and poverty pimps, services this bloody
industry built on Haitian life, death and unbearable suffering
- pontificating on Haiti's "problem," producing self-aggrandizing
neocolonial
"news"
articles,
crazy
summaries of events
in Haiti, patriarchic UN/OAS
resolutions, foreign policy and "aid packages"
that cyclically reproduces Haiti's dependency-for-profit, negative stereotypes,
civil unrest, injustice, poverty, corruption, and political instability.
The sum effect of these international interventions and organizations,
their point of convergence, trap Haitian life, death and existence to
always service the white superiority persona, white profit, godly image
and US-Euro hegemony.
The U.S./Euros, their corporatocracy, economic hit men, U.N./OAS proxies,
their Haitian minions and death squads (trained by U.S. intelligence
or at the School
of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia), are, and have
been, the main purveyors of Haiti's poverty, dictatorship, injustices,
instability and insecurity. (Legacy
of Impunity: The Neoconlonialist inciting political instability is the
problem. Haiti is underdeveloped in crime, corruption, violence, compared
to other nations).
Yet, whenever Haitians
speak out about the racism and colonial blueprint in Haiti or, if the
mainstream medias do finally mention the context of the institutionalized
underdevelopment of Haiti, there is never any white world self-examination
of the criminal role of any U.S./Euro
key policymakers, because, as usual the topic is quickly
switched to black-on-black crime (the "troubled" Haitians)
and the ever ubiquitous and virulent of overstatements, for instance,
that "it's not an issue of white people versus black people,"
- "the U.S. is not full of hatred for what Haiti stands for, not
inherently racist, that's past history. There's just been some "mixed
signals," "isolated incidents" and "mistakes."
(See, Mixed
U.S. Signals Helped Tilt Haiti Toward Chaos).
This cop-out deflects and diminishes the real issue of U.S./Euro institutionalized
inadequacies, while simultaneously paralyzing most institutionalized,
in-the-beltway-Black-"leaders" and black professionals with
embarrassment, instead of a commitment to address the deliberately-planned-with-malice-aforethought,
institutionalized white violence against Haiti and Haitians from the
white world's powers, their poverty-pimp-cottage-industries, and numerous
human
rights "experts on the Haitian problem"
(from both the "liberal" and conservative political spectrums),
perpetuating the manipulated images of Haiti, the dependency, racism
and advising on more governing and policing for the Black- "troubled"-Haitian
majority, preferably white-controlled governing and policing.
They say the truth will set you free. But Haitians have been writing
and speaking truth-to-power and detailing the white world's malevolence
towards Haiti for centuries. Only General Jean Jacques Dessalines' military
prowess once dented the white world's denials. Most whites will still
straight up maintain that there's no continuing U.S./Euro patterns
of invasions and occupations in Haiti combined with a projection
of a false-innocence and pure persona for white folks and a projection
of all blame and abhorrent behaviors conveniently imposed on the Haitians
and Dessalines' accomplishments.
Militarily and economically defenseless and media-voiceless Haitians
are convenient scapegoats and easy prey for these tyrants and bullies.
Haitians are dehumanized and Haiti is browbeaten, terrorized and contained
in misery - suffering coup after U.S./Euro-organized coups and civil
unrest - in order that the white nations may appease their own vain
and feeble need to prove superiority and hide the inadequacies (genocide,
greed, slavery, exclusion, crimes-against-humanity-and-the-natural-environment)
upon which most of their life and cultures are founded on.
HAITIANS
REJECT NEOCOLONIALISM
The people of Haiti are fighting against formidable odds, as all around
them in the Caribbean exist only U.S. or Euro colonies, client states
and territories, also hostile to Haiti's Afrocentricity and refusal
to be quietly re-colonized.
The tiny nation of Haiti has valiantly struggled, for over two centuries,
for its sovereignty, its own language, Vodun sacred values and most
importantly to not end up a colonial
enterprise, like
the Dominican Republic and as the rest of the Caribbean islands where
mostly Eurocentric-black overseers manage their Black and brown populations
for the benefit of the white superpower nations. And where the Island
peoples are set off as props in their own homeland - maids, butlers,
prostitutes, gardeners, entertainers and housekeepers - servicing the
foreign-owned white tourist industry while their masses live in abject
poverty and total deprivation; their island resources exported to feed
and further enrich said same foreign white countries as in the times
of slavery.
Ezili's HLLN gives voice and visibility to Haiti as a place for Dessalines
and his rejection of neocolonialism and a place for Ezili
Dantò, the irreducible essence of the African/Haitian
warrior mother, that rarely was part of the international conversation
on Haiti.
"Because of the Western narrative about Haiti, Haitians are the
most persecuted human beings in the entire Western Hemisphere, bar none."
(See, The
Western vs Real Narrative on Haiti; Haiti,
We're Sorry,
and
Africa: In Solidarity with Site Soley, Haiti.)
So, our intent is to counter the media's neocolonial journalism on Haiti,
its myths, cliches, traditional bias and opportunistic American narrative
on Haiti. That is, their projection of racist stereotypes onto Haiti
to serve the hero or savior myth that upholds white privilege.
Fact is, the mainstream medias are constantly suturing together the
flag that Dessalines ripped in two.
Their take is older than 1804's media stereotypes on Haiti. (See, "...it's
that old ripped yarn, spinning played out stories in different colors
when not flying on Coast Guard boats sailing our ancestor's tear-filled
sound waves...")
Ezili's HLLN attempts to give another
voice to Haiti, tell how the media uses the good public's
trust to put over the scams of the U.S. State Department in Haiti -
that Haiti's civil unrest is originated by Haitians alone
with no official white world instigators' meddling.
Through writings, campaigns,
the Ezili Dantò Witness Project and Listserve, HLLN has shown
how their manipulation of
the facts of Haiti-U.S. relationship continually and fraudulently perpetrates
and promotes the idea that it's all about the black-on-black crime pattern
in Haiti defined by the West as the troubled, “fighting Haitians,”
who can’t get along, can't rule themselves, and who are inferior
and incompetent blacks.
This vain and self-serving colonial blueprint promotes white privilege
and racism by failing to point to the imperialist hand in Haiti’s
destabilization - the imperialist hand that armed death squads;
promoted impasse; financed and
carried out the 2004 foreign intervention/coup d’etat; and, the
US/Euros criminal role in burdening the Haitian nation in debt, dependency
and foreign domination to maintain a perpetually underdeveloped Haiti.
Their criminal role in making it impossible for any authentically sanctioned
Haitian leader, not into massively
PRIVATIZING Haiti for the US-Euro global
elites, to make
a go at eradicating the misery of the masses.
(Matters
to be Investigated).
THE MOST AWESOME OF UNTOLD
MACHIEVELLIAN DRAMAS BEING PLAYED OUT ON PLANET EARTH
"With
the 2004 bicentennial coup d'etat, the Western powers, led by Bush-the-son,
have re-established their dominance in Haiti. They have restructured
the Haitian police with (more than 800 of) the former bloody Haitian
military, emptied the jails of criminals and put uniforms on them and
called them "police." Then, extra-constitutionally
appointed, through their imposed Latortue/Boca Raton regime, new Supreme
Court justices, police chiefs and court functionaries beholden to the
foreign business interests that gave them their jobs.
Now, with President Preval rendered a mere puppet leader under the weight
of 9,000 U.N. troops occupying Haiti and this foreign restructured Haitian
police, the Internationals (US/UN/Canada/France and their extra-constitutional
Haitian police force, technocrats and justice appointees) are the ones
busy eradicating corruption and injustice in Haiti, in the police, and
in the Haitian judiciary to the tune of billions in "peacekeeping"
and billions in "aid" debts and loans, all, piled on the heads
of the objecting but defenseless Haitian masses! This bloody US/Euro
profit industry, built on unbearable Haitian pain, is the most awesome
of untold Machiavellian dramas being played out on planet earth.
ANSWERING TO MEDIA
QUESTIONS ABOUT HAITI
HLLN first laid out the
reasons for the white world's disenfranchisement of the Haitian people
in 2004, in an article
entitled "Answers
to media questions about Haiti,"written
the day after the 2004
foreign intervention
in Haiti. This was in response to questions from independent
media outlets the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network ("HLLN")
fielded.
In that article we indicated that Emmanuel "Toto"
Constant, a
known CIA asset and head of
the FRAPH death squad, may possibly already be in Haiti doing his masters'
biddings.
FRAPH
was created by US operatives during the first Bush coup detat against
Haitian democracy in 1991 to eradicate political opponents to the Bush
military regime in Haiti that oustered President Aristide the first
time. (See, Bush
Blockhead By John Maxwell, July 2006; Prime
Minister Yvon Neptune's explosive and condemning August 23, 2004 letter
from Prison to US Ambassador James Foley;
Randall
Robinson's Eyewitness (Frantz Gabriel) account of the abduction of President
and First Lady Aristide of Haiti by the United States Special Forces).
As it happened, Toto Constant had stayed in the US where he was later
incarcerated on unrelated bank fraud charges. Subsequently,
in a separate case in 2006, a U.S. judge determined that Emmanuel "Toto"
Constant “founded and oversaw an organization that was dedicated
principally toward terrorizing and torturing political opponents of
the military regime” and ordered "the Haitian strongman to
pay $19.5 millions to rape victims." Toto Constant was ruled "liable
for torture, attempted extra-judicial killing and crimes against humanity.
Overall, even after
more than three years of occupation, the answers
to media questions about Haiti, released
by HLLN at the beginning of the 2004 foreign intervention, is still
relevant and provides answers to the US/international intervention in
Haiti which are, in spite of everything, in direct opposition to the
corporate media's main lines about Haiti - that President Aristide either
resigned or was oustered by an autonomous
and weighty "Haitian" "civil society" in a "popular
revolt," and had "no support in Haiti," because he had
become a dictator (similar
to the US-supported Duvaliers!).
"For
Instance, the U.S. State Department's own expert, own translator, Bryant
Freeman, said President Aristide did not resign.
Yet, every mainstream media reporting
on Haiti since the 2004 foreign intervention either omits this fact
and reports of president Aristide "fleeing" Haiti or resigning
voluntarily. (See:Pdf
of Letter in Kreyol Original ,
PDF of
Letter in English;
The Smoking gun: Aristide Didn't Resign.
See also, Matters
to be Investigated).
The UN "peacekeepers" continue, in relative media silence,
to target, eliminate and/or indefinitely incarcerate Aristide's and
the Lavalas Movement supporters in the poor and populous neighborhoods.
BRINGING SECURITY TO HAITI
When Haiti was free of foreign
troops, "...(t)he most disingenuous claim used repeatedly by the
(anti-democratic Haitian) opposition and the U.S. was that the 'security
situation' was not sufficient to maintain a fair election."
But during the 2006 (s)elections, "when the internationals had
firmly taken over Haiti, the OAS, in fact, cheered on the exclusion
of Haiti's masses from the elections by giving contracts (printing and
for digital voting machines) for the elections, to the Haitian coup
detat implementers - the Boulos and Apaid families. No OAS
822-like-Haiti-resolution expressed
concerned that "all parties take part in the formation a credible,
neutral and independent Provisional Electoral Council (CEP)."
(See, The
February 29th Coup d’Etat Against President Jean Bertrand Aristide
and the Role of the United States in the Coup (Second of two articles)",
Haiti Progres, March 24, 2004 .)
In the name of bringing security to Haiti, thousands of young Haitians
were and are labeled "gangsters and kidnappers" for political
purposes and disenfranchised. And, to this day, the US
and world citizenry are taking as gospel the corporate medias' fairytales
about what the UN is doing in Haiti, about who it came to uphold; are
being mislead and manipulated through media lies, half-truths and disinformation
and by the uses of Empires' financial, diplomatic and military muscles
that perpetually extends the racist American narrative about Haiti and
its peoples.
Still, it is arguable that the informed
and conscious have no doubt that the mainstream multi-national media
corporations (like the, New York, Times, LA Times, Miami Herald, Washington
Times, Sun Sentinel, et al.) used their pens and power to foster the
bicentennial coup d’etat in Haiti that adversely affected all
Haitians. These media outlets lied by trumpeting
the 2004 foreign intervention in Haiti as a “popular revolt;”
by painting President Aristide as
a dictator in
the same way as the US-sustained-Duvalier dictatorships; by tagging
and converting, with one stroke of their pens, convicted Haitian thugs
and death squad leaders, into "freedom fighters"
and Haiti's freedom fighters into "gangsters and thugs."
(From
Thugs to Freedom Fighters to Thugs Haiti is Unraveling and No One is
Saying Anything by LARRY BIRNS and SETH DeLONG, COHA, Dec.
14, 2004).
Guy Philippe,
Andre Apaid, Jr, Stanley Lucas, Charles Baker, the Boulos brothers,
Butler Meyater, Jean Tatoune, Group 184, et al, could not have carried
out the bicentennial coup d’etat without the help of their imperialist
masters and various insiders (ie. Danny Toussaint) within the Lavalas
government pressured or co-opted by the almighty U.S. visa, dollar,
Eurocentric-ism and otherwise supported by foreign monies. (See,
Answers
to media questions about Haiti;
Haiti
as Target Practice: How the US Press Missed the Story by
Heather Williams - Counterpunch, March 1, 2004).
HAITIAN OPERATIVES/TRAITORS DISCREDITED
But ironically most of the Bush State Department's prominent Haitian
operatives (Chamblain, Philippe, Tatoune, Butler
Metayer, Stanley Lucas) of the 2004 foreign intervention have been discredited
and exposed by the US itself. Though, invariably the mainstream media
has failed to connect the dots and reasses their statements about most
of these folks and their characterization of the foreign intervention
of 2004 in Haiti as a the "popular revolt."
Louis Jodel Chamblain was arrested in Haiti for massacre convictions
but then promptly set free by the Bush-imposed-coup-d'etat government
after a sham trial. Ambassador James Foley publicly and hypocritically
decried the blatant sham
trial. (See, The
Delahunt Letter).
Three years later, in 2007, Guy Philippe (who ran for president of Haiti
garnering less than 1% of the vote even with US and the Internationals
financing his candidacy) was again charged by the DEA on drug charges.
The mainstream press ignored all the significance of these news stories
and U.S. complicity in destroying Haiti's democracy. For, the United
States had backed terrorists, death squad leaders and drug dealers over
the Haitian peoples' choice for leaders and labeled all dissenters corrupt
or "bandits", "criminals and gangsters."
The major media outlets ignored that foreign-trained and created Haitian
thugs and career criminals, who were agents of the US in destabilizing
Haiti, were set free to traffic in drugs, illegal arms, murder, rape,
plunder and create havoc that compelled the ordinary Haitian citizen
to resist in self-defense or flee Haiti on rickety boats in search of
asylum. Ignored that the contrived U.S. situations forever allows the
US/Euros the opportunity to intervene to "rescue" Haiti from
a "bloodbath." (See, The
Issue With US-DEA War on Drugs in Haiti-Partisan Bias/enforcement and
Arbitrary
and Capricious rules of "justice" and defamatory, simplistic
and unfair mainstream media reporting apply to the poor in Site Soley,
Haiti - Site Soley Update April 19, 2007;
Moving On
; LA
Times on a Haitian Army - An example of how LA Times spins the truth,
manipulates information, promotes the views of the Haitian elites and
sell's it to their unwary readers as "Haiti's view"
; It's
Neither Hope nor Progress When the International Community is Running
Haiti
and Examples
of Neocolonial Journalism.)
The informed and conscious have no doubt about the lies, half truths,
media disinformations and State Department manipulation of public opinion
on Haiti.
The point is if Haitians were not the descendants of Toussaint Louverture,
the "opener," there would be no door out when the powers-that-be
contrived the foreign-runned 2006 digital elections to put in their
repugnantly un-electable black overseers.
There would be no door out when the powers-that-be have so thoroughly
vilified Aristide and narrowly defined Haiti's foreign-made problems
and manufactured conflicts as "the Aristide problem," the
corrupt, divisive and "fighting Haitians'" problem and thus
anyone who stands for Aristide's return, or, for an end to foreign support
of the tiny economic elites, are also painted with the same brush as
Aristide and dubbed "chimeres", "corrupt" and divisive.
Haitians have been facing Empire's traps for a long time. The majority
are unschooled by the West and therefore live by what they experience
and not what the New York Times write about their realities. Thus, don't
fall into their programming as the schooled Haitians and unwary U.S.
public do, but rather lead from source - African source.
THE HAITIAN
SOURCE
For most Haitians, even those who deny it consciously, source is still
that Vodun mythological place, that sacred other place which Haitians
created, that validates Black folks at their soul forever and from the
beginning to eternity, countering racism, slavery, white privilege,
endless debt and neocolonialism.
This "other place" is found somewhere on this planet where
authority is not truth, but truth is authority for one and all.
It exists only where it is created when one claims the parts of history
that have been systematically written out of history by the Catholic
Monarchs, Western founders, their Judeo-Christian culture and Breton
Woods organizations. ( Mumia
Abu-Jamal at prison radio, August 19, 2007 - The
Power of History: Haiti Recorded
August 19, 2007 - MP3-3:34 )
Haiti's majority non-schooled Haitians understand well why the endless
Haiti-gravy-train of "foreign aid" being lapped up by US State
Department cronies and ex-USAID, OAS, UN and IDB mission directors and
employees; why the enormous war-profits being made, for centuries, in
Haiti by U.S. do-gooder "experts," defense contractors, big-business,
the NGOs, the foundation heads and employees and other such New World
profiteers, and now the U.N. ($1billion
a year alone to the UN for their troops), big-business, in the name
of "benevolence," "reform," "peacekeeping"
and "charity," are purposely never analyzed by the international
press and their talking heads.
Mumia Abu-Jamal has brilliantly observed "...Black
suffering
and death (in Haiti has always) meant white profits and sweets...
And we note that just as slavery and brutality was good for business
for the Europeans, in these times, coup d'etats, civil unrests, misery,
insecurity, illiteracy, death and poverty in Haiti, means millions to
billions in reform, aid and "investment" dollars for the Breton
woods contingent, the world corporate robber barons and their NGO sidekicks.
MASTURBATIN ON BLACK PAIN
Between 1994 and
1996, US governmental "reformers" made over $3 billion dollars
in Haiti as a result of the first Bush, Sr.'s Haiti coup d'etat. The
big corporate and "investors" class profited from their governmental
privileges to make many more than that quick amount.
Bush, Jr.'s 2004 Haiti intervention appears to be more sustainable and
even more profitable for the reformers and defense contractors. Blackwater
Security got its piece of the warmongers' bloody billlions. And, the
UN "peacekeepers" are making upwards to $1 billion a year,
and providing jobs to soldiers from countries where they are hired to
butcher their own civilians; where there is no work; no justice or fledging
democracy. The life of the chosen foreign "other" (Pakistani,
Chinese, Brazilian, Chilean, Mauritanian, et al soldier as well as the
civilian paper pushers from North America who get to suck up to 80%
of any allocated monies, resources or "profits" made in these
regular let's-make-a-quick-buck-Haitian-interventions) vastly improves
when "law and order" must be "restored" to Haiti.
The life of the ordinary Haitian has never improved under foreign intervention.
Under the first US occupation from 1914 to 1934, Haitians were put back
in slave chains under the pretext of re-establishing the corvee, and
under the 2004 occupation with the U.N. acting as US military proxy,
Haitians have been summarily disenfranchised, disappeared, subject to
U.N. searches, rapes, and indefinitely detained in prisons. (See U.S.
Patterns in Haiti ;US
Aid Go Home! and Haiti's
Holocaust and Middle Passage Continues.)
AN UNBROKEN AGONY
The US/Euros' masturbating on black pain continues unabated as Empire's
warmongers in three-piece suits and other of their recognized authorities
plunder, terrorize and impoverishes Haiti under the rubric of "bringing
security, democracy and justice" to Haiti. (See also: Randall
Robinson on " An Unbroken Agony: Haiti: From Revolution to the
Kidnapping of a President;
Eyewitness
(Frantz Gabriel) account of the abduction of President and First Lady
Aristide of Haiti by the United States Special Forces).
As a keen observer of media lies
and Western contrivances once said, here’s the imperialist divide
and conquer motif:
“If you wish to destroy an area, how do you do it? Well, there
are two ways. You can go in there and bomb it and so forth. But that
is not very efficient. What you do is try to get the people in that
area to kill each other. And to destroy their own territory, their own
farms. And that’s what been done (in that area). The way in which
you destroy and bomb, is get him to destroy himself by dividing his
ranks against one another. Then you feed both sides. You have agents
feeding both sides, inflaming both sides. And they kill each other off.
It’s time that some of us woke up to this reality. To understand
that people who try to maintain empires and create empires, do it by
manipulating the people they are trying to conquer.” (http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/
(1:56:23 ) a movie exposing the lies of the mass media, Catholic Church
and ruling elites, EVERYONE should make the time to watch, or, go directly
to Zeitgeist – Part 11 to quickly get to the above quote http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w61uQtTUKGQ
)
NEOCOLONIAL JOURNALISM BUT THE HAITIAN RESISTANCE CONTINUES...
In August 2007, the LA times, in an apparent effort to continue to manufacture
consent and consolidate the gains of the 2004-Bush Regime change, even
wrote that the HAITIAN
PEOPLE wanted the bloody Haitian army returned to Haiti. (See,
LA
Times on a Haitian Army - An example of how LA Times spins the truth,
manipulates information, promotes the views of the Haitian elites and
sell's it to their unwary readers as "Haiti's view.")
Also, in August of 2007, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon visited
Haiti, for the first time and wrote, in the Washington Times, there
was hope at last for Haiti presumably because the U.N. had squashed
open dissent to the UN occupation and incarcerated all the "gangsters."
He didn't put it exactly like that, but that was the essence just the
same. (See, It's
Neither Hope nor Progress when the International Community is Running
Haiti
and; Ban Ki-moon's "Hope
At Last For Haiti"
and, Ezili
Dantò's Note: Bwa Kayiman 2007 and the case of Lovinsky Pierre
Antoine |