Very interesting to see the major media coverage of Aristide's "voluntary resignation" and "self-imposed exile" to the Central African Republic, contrasted with non-mainstream sources which indicate Aristide was removed in handcuffs at gunpoint by U.S. troops.
The US militarily occupied Haiti for 20 years before installing a succession of dictators until Aristide's democratic election.
Given that Canada and France are complicit in the exile of an elected Haitian democratic leader in favour of the current anarchy suggests that there are stakeholders hostile to democracy unknown to us the public, but are in intense negotiation with the US and other international players.
Who are the players within Haiti if it's democracy is so easily dismantled by a regime headed by former supporters of the dreaded "ton ton macoute" and a drug lord ...and why their tacet support by France, Canada and the US?
"Haiti is in crisis! The former leader has fled the country and mobs are looting the major cities!"
You know something? You could have published that headline at any time during the past two hundred years and no one would be shocked. In fact, it HAS been published numerous times in the past two hundred years. And no one was shocked.
Haiti was the very first slave nation to rise up and cast out their masters. They were the very first to gain independance. The first to have freedom.
Too bad they just keep sliding back into dictatorship and anarchy, time and time again. It seems to be a never ending cycle. It's truly sad.
I've flown over the island of Hispanola several times while I was living in the southern hemisphere...and you can clearly see the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti. One side is lush and green and the other is a kind of gray-brown. Apparently, the forest has been stripped away to make cooking charcoal on the Haitian side.
Given the absence of riches in this poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, I doubt if the USA has any real interest in "stealing their resources". If they stay out of the place while the looters burn it down, then they'll be accused of turning their backs on Haiti in its time of chaos.
If they step in and try to maintain some sort of order (as they are currently doing)...then the conspiracy theorists will stay up all night trying to cook up a new reason to hate the Americans.
Given the absence of riches in this poorest nation ...
It is certainly a dismal society but some Haitians are very well off indeed.
I hope that the info below sent to me from U of Montreal after my above request for same gives us at least some idea of the political economy of Haiti.
The info is almost a decade old but we can assume that the traditionally well off families in Haiti are still there and very much in control.
The first is a quite candid Dow Jones in house report revealing the dominant Haitian family names and some of their holdings. The second is certainly critical of a "business elite" in Haiti and it's labour practices.
Interesting stuff, macello. Papa Doc and Baby Doc were always profligate spenders, as we all know.
But it's really pretty small potatoes. Much of the real wealth came from foreign aid that was diverted by corrupt officials...and foreign aid was pretty much cut off a few years back.
Besides....any factories or palatial estates that were left in Haiti are likely to be in flames right now. Picked clean.
I guess the Bush Administration must have done one helluva sell job on the average Haitian in order to persuade them that Aristide was a criminal instead of their savior. Or a new "Fidel". [img]tongue.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/lmao.gif[/img] (too funny!)
You can tell, because of the cheering crowds in the streets once Aristide had fled the country. Amazing combination of payoff and propaganda to accomplish THAT sort of public outpouring of relief, dontcha think? [img]tongue.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/heybaby.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/lmao.gif[/img]
And I wonder what the US might have gained from all of this? Oil wealth? A strategic advantage over Trinidad? Gold? Diamonds? Perhaps they wanted to corner the market for cooking charcoal in the hemisphere's poorest country? (new slogan for the post-Aristide Haiti..."Use Kingsford Briquettes! It's better than stealing portions of your neighbors house for cooking fuel!")
Or...do you suppose that Aristide was on the brink of turning Haiti into some sort of economic powerhouse? Or a modern "socialist democracy" where every child has full schooling and hospitals are paid for by the state?
GOTTA snuff THAT out! Right away! It could catch on, after all.
Given that the uprising was done by a small but reasonably well trained and armed group, I would not put it past the CIA to have created it. But I really have no indication one way or another.
Give it a year, and see who the "winners" are and what changes have occured. Then we might be able to guess just what lead to the change of government.
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Necessity is the excuse for every infringement of human freedom.<br />It is the argument of the tyrant and the creed of the slave.<br /> -- William Pitt, 1763
It may have been a small band of rebels who set out to make this radical change in government...but they found thousands of willing supporters in every city.
The crowds of people in the streets who were loudly cheering and celebrating Aristide's departure are a well-documented fact. They even stopped looting for a short time, once they heard he'd gone.
Some people here think the CIA is all-powerful...and that they can influence any group, large or small.
Not true. Those guys couldn't plan their way out of a subway exit. Let alone persuade a population of eight million that a "good guy" is actually a "really bad guy".
Aristide was a better choice than anything else in Haiti. For a while.
That's why the US and many other countries...including Canada...openly supported him. When it was obvious that he had to leave and it became apparent that his continuing presence was leading to the anarchy that threatened to destroy what little infrastructure was left in that ruined country...
Then the US gave him a ticket out. They protected his exit and he left with all his limbs intact (several previous Haitian leaders have been hacked to death by mobs of angry citizens).
He repaid this by claiming that he was "kidnapped".
As IF! [img]tongue.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/lmao.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/lmao.gif[/img]
The State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said of Mr Aristide after he departed: "We all know the political history of Haiti is such that during President Aristide's time, he created a lot of division within the society - the polarisation grew, the violence grew.
Critics say that something else was at work. The harshest critic in this instance is a leading world economist Jeffrey Sachs, now Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York. He argued in an article in the Financial Times that the United States had overthrown a democratic leader:
"The crisis in Haiti is another case of brazen US manipulation of a small, impoverished country with the truth unexplored by journalists. President George Bush's foreign policy team came into office intent on toppling Mr Aristide, long reviled by powerful US conservatives such as former senator Jesse Helms who obsessively saw him as another Fidel Castro in the Caribbean.
"Such critics fulminated when President Bill Clinton restored Mr Aristide to power in 1994, and they succeeded in getting US troops withdrawn soon afterwards, well before the country could be stabilised. In terms of help to rebuild Haiti, the US Marines left behind about eight miles of paved roads and essentially nothing else .............
"In the meantime, the so-called "opposition", a coterie of rich Haitians linked to the preceding Duvalier regime and former (and perhaps current) CIA operatives, worked Washington to lobby against Mr Aristide."
Some people here think the CIA is all-powerful...and that they can influence any group, large or small.
Not true. Those guys couldn't plan their way out of a subway exit. Let alone persuade a population of eight million that a "good guy" is actually a "really bad guy".
Those who forget the lessons of history...
Gerry, old pal, you don't give those folks enough credit. They managed a convincing job in Guatemala in 1954, when they overthrew the democratic government of Arbenz with a ghost army. They did pretty well in Chile. They're doing a bang-up job in Venezuela, where a small slice of that country's population is recieving massive international attention for their opposition to Chavez, while the vast majority of Venezuelans (the poor, who through a democratic process voted him into office - twice!) support the government (hundreds of thousands march in the street to support Chavez, while the corporate media covers only the opposition marches).
The indications are there that the U.S. did indeed manipulate this situation, through support and encouragement to rebel groups and mercenaries, while withholding international aid and blocking IMF loans. I'm quite sure the Haitian people are glad things are changing - Haiti is the poorest country in the hemisphere (and darn near the world).
The CIA? Of course they were involved. The CARICOM leaders are in an absolute rage about the U.S. usurping of the democratic process, the ouster of Aristide and have refused to support the "peacekeeping" force with their own troops.
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