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seemslikeadream Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-19-04 06:47 PM
Original message
Threats to Aristide supporters
PORT-AU-PRINCE, March 18.—Members of the party headed by the deposed president of Haiti, Jean Bertrand Aristide, are being repressed and, according to his former minister Leslie Voltaire, his former aides are under threat.

Voltaire stated today that members of the Lavalas Family Party cannot meet and are being subjected to a veritable witch hunt.


The French government, the former colonial metropolis, has decided that Dominique de Villepin, its foreign minister, will be the first foreign dignitary to visit the country in response to an invitation by the new government. He should arrive in Haiti before the end of the month.

The significance of this act is evident: it will be the first visit from a head of French diplomacy since Haiti’s independence in 1804, according to the AFP news agency.

http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2004/marzo/vier19/13amenaz.html

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seemslikeadream Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-19-04 06:48 PM
Response to Original message
1. Roll Back this Coup, Mr. Bush
March 19, 2004

Haiti and the Impotence of Black America

Roll Back this Coup, Mr. Bush

By CYNTHIA McKINNEY

....
Now, according to one of my investigative sources, one of the contracts that Preval put in place was with the Steele Foundation to provide presidential security. The Steele Foundation, headquartered here in the Bay Area, is reportedly very close to the Pentagon, with its former leader coming directly from the Pentagon's Office of Intelligence. Interestingly, it reportedly maintains an office in Miami, the home of the headquarters of the U.S. Special Operations Command, which was reportedly involved in training the rebels who ousted Aristide. So, at the time of Aristide's "capture," he supposedly was protected by a Pentagon-sanctioned security team that just happened to fail to secure him.

Additionally, according to this same source, some of the Dominican troops and Spanish and English-speaking paramilitaries trained by the U.S. during last year's Operation Jaded Task in the Dominican Republic were fighting alongside Haitian rebels in the north and on the southern coast of Haiti. We are told further that Haitian government authorities intercepted vans carrying new M-16s across the border from the Dominican Republic. According to the report I have received, Haitian authorities began intercepting vans carrying the weapons from the Dominican Republic beginning last year, and shortly after the U.S. military delivered 20,000 M-16s to the Dominican Army.....


Black America, vibrant with authentic leaders, in active partnership with all progressives, can change what is happening here at home and the policies being implemented abroad.

And so I end with a plea and a charge for us as a people to stand up, speak truth to power, don't cower, and say to those who control this awful machine, "It's time for you to stop, right now."

http://www.counterpunch.org/mckinney03192004.html


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nicecakes Donating Member (126 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-20-04 03:02 AM
Response to Reply #1
5. Bummer
A well respected and ex-congress woman is relegated to getting the word out via counterpunch instead of a taxpayer funded website. Sad.
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w4rma Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Mar-21-04 01:30 AM
Response to Reply #5
19. I disagree. (n/t)
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proud patriot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-19-04 06:50 PM
Response to Original message
2. Ewwww .... that picture burns my Britches
:grr:
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struggle4progress Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-20-04 12:08 AM
Response to Original message
3. kick
:kick:
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Tinoire Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-20-04 02:53 AM
Response to Original message
4. That picture kills me
Chirac, contrary to what the US media has groomed him to appear, is a right-winger.
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burrowowl Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Mar-21-04 02:51 AM
Response to Reply #4
20. Chirac is a bloody facsist
Hope the regional elections in France give his party a woomping.
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Name removed Donating Member (0 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-20-04 03:07 AM
Response to Original message
6. Deleted message
Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.
 
seemslikeadream Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-20-04 10:43 AM
Response to Original message
7. Aristide supporters


A man holds up a poster of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide during a pro-Aristide march in the Bel-Air district of Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Thursday March 11, 2004.(AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)



A child holds up a poster of ousted President Jean Bertrand Aristide during a pro-Aristide march in the Bel-Air district of Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Thursday March 11, 2004.(AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills



Supporters of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide march in the Bel-Air district of Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Thursday March 11, 2004. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)



Marines in Haiti : A supporter of former Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide shouts as US marines patrol the Bel Aire district of Port-Au-Prince. (AFP/Yuri Cortez)




Hundreds of supporters of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide protest around US Marines patrolling the streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday, March 4, 2004. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)



A supporter of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide cries outside the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, after his departure Sunday, Feb. 29, 2004. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-20-04 11:04 AM
Response to Reply #7
8. Thanks for those photos. Very well done.
I've noticed before, the Aristide supporters REALLY seem to love him. That's one thing completely missing in the "opposition" people. There is NO unifying love for anything among them.

They are traitors, and betrayers of the Haitian people.

I'd like to know how Bush can live with himself, if he actually doesn't stay profoundly "medicated." His conscience must be so deeply buried he'll never see it again.

I hope justice will sometime return to Haiti and we live long enough to see it.
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seemslikeadream Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-20-04 11:29 AM
Response to Reply #8
9. Your welcome and thanks for the post
pictures say more than I could ever convey. I will post some of the opposition later today.
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-20-04 11:47 AM
Response to Original message
10. Haiti: Drugs, Thugs, the CIA, and the Deterrence of Democracy
Thanks for the latest info, seemslikeadream! I posted this piece of background on GD earlier today. It explains why the BFEE loves Haiti's worst elements: They''re good for the Narco biz. Remember the "Attaches?"

HAITI: DRUGS,THUGS, THE C.I.A., AND THE DETERRENCE OF DEMOCRACY

SNIP...

After the October 30, 1993 deadline to restore duly-elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide passed unrealized, observers reported an increasing sense of fear and despair. More than 4,000 civilians have been killed since the 1991 bloody military coup which ousted Aristide. Few Americans are aware of our secret involvement in Haitian politics, nor the impact those policies have had on the US.

Some of the high military officials involved in the coup have been on the CIA's payroll from "the mid-1980s at least until the 1991 coup..." According to one government official, "Several of the principal players of the current situation were compensated by the US government."

Further, the CIA "tried to intervene in Haiti's election with a covert- action program that would have undercut the political strength" of Aristide. The aborted attempt to influence the 1988 election was authorized by then-President Ronald Reagan and the National Security Council. The program was blocked by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in a rare move.

Next, a confidential Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) report revealed that Haiti is "a major transshipment point for cocaine traffickers" who are funneling drugs from Colombia and the Dominican Republic into the United States. The DEA report also revealed that the drug trafficking, which is bringing one to four tons of cocaine per month into the US, worth $300-$500 million annually, is taking place with "the knowledge and active involvement of high military officials and business elites."

According to Patrick Elie, who was Aristide's anti-drug czar, Haitian police chief Lt. Col. Michel Francois is at the center of the drug trade. Francois' "attaches" reportedly have been responsible for a large number of murders and violence since the coup.

CONTINUED...

http://www.netti.fi/~makako/mind/haiti1.htm

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Tinoire Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-20-04 12:26 PM
Response to Original message
11. French Minister Villepin's sister was up to her neck in the coup
Journalist and French writer Thierry Meyssan reports that France and United States agreed in the summer of 2003 to a joint plan to prepare a coup d'etat against the ousted president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, due, among others things, to Washington's strategic interests in the region and to utilize the country as a base of operations to finish off Fidel Castro "within five months". The other motive would be French reaction to Aristide's decision to demand that Paris refund debt payments contracted with the former colony throughout the XIX century.

<snip>

Under these circumstances, indicates the journalist, Bush contacted France to carry out the plan to overthrow Aristide, with the objective to establish a base of operations "to finish off Fidel Castro (president of Cuba) within five months". The project would encompass 4 phases. The first phase was to achieve "democratic destabilization" by means of supporting and financing the internal opposition with funds from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the creation, directed by U.S. undersecretary of State, Roger Noriega (an old enemy of Liberation Teology, to which Aristide subscribed), of a task force "for democratic restoration".

<snip>

The second phase is referred to as "diplomatic pressure", an operation supervised by the French intellectual Régis Debray and Veronique Albanel, president of the Universal Fraternal Association and the sister of Dominique of Villepin, the current French foreign minister. Under this cover, the U.S. and France exerted pressures on different countries of the region so that they would not participate in the ceremonies of the 200th independence anniversary of the "first black republic of America", celebrated January 1, this year in Port au Prince.

The third phase of the plan was the 'military destabilization' of Haiti in which, according to Meyssan, United States would put into play an armed group in the Dominican Republic, under the orders of Guy Philippe. In February 5, this group carried out an armed uprising in Gonaives (north), while the Group of 184, "in permanent contact" with the American secretary of state, Colin Powell, ordered the opposition to maintain a distance with the rebels to be able to opt for power without "having to feel responsible for the abuses or atrocities committed by the insurgents on their behalf", added the journalist.

<snip>

That same day, AFP commented that "many in Port Au Prince believed that the Dominican Army allowed the old Haitian military to enter Haiti with the approval of the U.S. which maintains very close ties with its joint command and the Government." The French agency also recalled that the "Dominican Republic was the only Caribbean country to sent 300 soldiers to Iraq at the request of the U.S." The fourth act of the plan was the "Abduction". On Sunday, U.S. Special Forces seized the Presidential Palace and told Aristide that, unless he resigned, he would be sent to Miami to be judged for drug trafficking. Otherwise, they would expect the arrival of his opponent, Guy Philippe, who had received orders "to kill him", said Meyssan.

<snip>

http://victoria.indymedia.org/news/2004/03/22828.php

Here's the original article:

Washington and Paris overthrow Aristide
Coup d’Etat in Haiti
Washington and Paris reconciled their colonial interests in the Caribbean by going on the attack with a cunning, well organized coup d’Etat in Haïti to overthrow elected president Aristide. After building an opposition that suited US interests, in the shape of former Duvalier regime financial handyman Andre Apaid, Washington then created armed opposition headed by former putschist officer Guy Philippe. Meanwhile, French powerbrokers Regis Debray and Veronique de Villepin-Albanel tried to force Jean-Bertrand Aristide to resign. Eventually, as the street remained loyal to Aristide, the "rebels" did not sweep into Port-au-Prince. It was left to US special forces to kidnap the president, in a dawn raid on the presidential palace.

<snip / note snipped sentence about Guy Phillipe fleeing to the US Embassy after the first coup in 2000! >

The Bush-2 administration made its decision to overthrow him at the end of 2002, and found a good community of views with France on this subject, since both nations have traditionally seen Haiti as needing common control. Paris, conversely, did not set its stance until summer 2003. By then, a common plan was laid down for the coup that was coming.

<snip>

Act 2: Diplomatic coercion

On the French side, the operation was supervised by Régis Debray and Véronique Albanel. The latter is listed as president of the "Universal Brotherhood" which carries out charitable action in Haïti, linked with the catholic church. Albanel is also the sister of Dominique Galouzeau de Villepin, France’s foreign secretary, and the wife of French airforce general Baudoin Albanel.

(( My note: Shades of Napolean's sister, Pauline Leclerc, who went to Haiti to restore slavery in 1804 - At the last moment Bonaparte changed the command, putting his brother-in-law, Leclerc, at the head, a sign of the importance he attached to the venture. Pauline, Leclerc’s wife, and their son went with the expedition. She carried musicians, artists, and all the paraphernalia of a court. Slavery would be re-established, civilization restarted, and a good time would be had by all. More about that here: http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/379.html


On July 15, 2003, Andre Apaid <4>, a former financial handyman of the Duvalier regime <5> and the leader of Group 184 <6>, started raising the pressure, with a meeting organized in a slum devoted to Aristide, the Cite Soleil. Apaid asked for aid and protection from France, who provided him with armed escorts, and the presence of French embassy first secretary Stephane Grumberg. As hoped and planned, the meeting soon turned into riot, leaving 6 dead and 40 wounded by gunfire. Witnesses blamed French guards as solely responsible for the slaughter, which of course was denied by the embassy <7>.

On December 17, 2003, at 3 pm, Regis Debray showed up at the presidential palace to demand that elected president Jean-Bernard Aristide resign. This was refused, and was followed a few days later by the public release by Debray and Villepin-Albanel of their report to Foreign secretary Dominique de Villepin. The report noted: "Let us not fool ourselves. The resignation of President Aristide will not make the country more prosperous overnight, nor will it make it more productive." (p. 35). "Many persons imagine rivalry exists where there is in fact complementarity , and though our means of influence are not the same, they can and must add up, for the good of Haiti. It may be the President’s task, or at least the Foreign Affairs Minister’s, to define from the beginning, at the best level, the methods and spirit of this combination. A stronger implication in Haïti could indeed not run against the interests of the United States, but should operate in a well-balanced and cautious spirit." (p. 52). To sum up, the goal was to overthrow Aristide to defend the common interests of a large American empire and a small French empire. However, following the Iraq crisis and in a context of growing German-French alliance in Europe, Berlin also had to be brought onside in this joint effort, and also find its interest for its tiny empire. The report continued: "One cannot help thinking of the advantages, not only symbolic, that would be brought by opening a common French and German diplomatic mission in Port-au-Prince, which would naturally echo, on the other side of the Atlantic ocean, by opening of French-German missions, for example in Windhoek, Namibia, or elsewhere" (p. 57). The United States and France put pressure on various Caribbean and Latin American states to not take part in the the 200th aniversary ceremonies of the "first Negro republic of America" <8>, held on 1 January, 2004, in Port-au-Prince. Only South African president Thabo Mbeki defied the great powers by attending it.

<snip>

More of this Thierry Meyssan's great article here: http://www.voltairenetwork.net/article7.html

















================================
<snip>

Meanwhile, in France, a lawyer is preparing a complaint for "complicity in abduction" against four people connected with the Foreign Ministry, Concannon said.

He identified them as: Thierry Burkard, France's ambassador to Haiti; Yves Gaudel, the former ambassador; Regis Debray, president of a commission on French-Haiti relations; and Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin's sister, Veronique. She and Debray visited Aristide in December to demand his resignation, according to his French lawyer, Gilbert Collard.

<snip>

French Foreign Ministry spokesman Herve Ladsous said he had no comment on the lawyers' plans. He did not respond to a question about the role of de Villepin's sister at the ministry, saying only that several "qualified personalities" worked with Debray's commission.

<snip>

http://www.recorder.ca/cp/World/040310/w031059A.html
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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-20-04 12:49 PM
Response to Reply #11
12. This is so low, it's embarrassing to read it:
the U.S. and France exerted pressures on different countries of the region so that they would not participate in the ceremonies of the 200th independence anniversary of the "first black republic of America", celebrated January 1, this year in Port au Prince.
So nasty, petty, ungracious, anal, and Republican, it speaks poorly, poorly for a country with so many good people in it. What a damned shame it is when the crudest, and lowest in our country cheat their way to positions of power.

Also, did NOT know the French government had been in there, kicking and biting Aristide all this time, for Bush! While they were doing so much dirty work for him, he and his nest of vipers were simultaneously savaging the French image among American citizens.

They truly have NO shame, do they?
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Tinoire Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-20-04 01:52 PM
Response to Reply #12
13. Low... It gets even lower. Much lower.
Edited on Sat Mar-20-04 01:54 PM by Tinoire
You will be able to fill in the blanks. As you do... remember our "departed friend" who keep talking about the Carter Center.

They changed the name of Marc Henri Bazin from Marc Bazin as he was known to now "Henri Bazin". Truly sick.

Peace

====

PORT-AU-PRINCE, March 17 (AFP) - Haiti's new government was to be sworn in Wednesday, one day after Prime Minister Gerard Latortue completed the formation of a cabinet of 13 ministers he hopes will help restore stability to the violence-wracked Caribbean country.

<snip>

The ministers were to be sworn in at the presidential palace on Wednesday afternoon.
Former armed forces chief Herard Abraham, 63, will head the interior and national security ministry, a key post in a deeply polarized country that has been rocked by deadly violence in recent weeks. The retired general, who headed the armed forces from 1988 to 1991, is considered a moderate politician. (By effing whom?! Not by the Haitian people who forced him into exile for his crimes against the people!)

French-educated economist Yvon Simeon, 66, will head the foreign ministry. Simeon, who is close to Aristide's political opponents, has notably worked as a charge d'affaires in France and Belgium and as a consultant in Paris.
The Economy and Finance ministry goes to Henri Bazin, 70, an economist specialized in third world affairs who worked for the United Nations.

<snip>

http://www.ttc.org/200403171722.i2hhmfk06645.htm

Now here is what has me fuming. LIVID and fuming!

M. Henri Bazin. Marc Henri Bazin. = Effing MARC BAZIN

http://membres.lycos.fr/undhcap/Syllabus/Syllabus%20RelEcoInt%204A.htm

For those who can read French. Here are posts from Haitians about that lying, ready-to-sell the entire country up the river Marc Bazin the technocrat: http://www.oplpeople.com/message/335.html

===
Tuesday December 18, 1990 (Excerpt)

Lorry-loads of police moved to control the crowds of slum dwellers in Latin America's poorest country as they surged past the presidential palace, dancing and singing. A pregnant woman was shot dead when police opened fire in front of a church. Her husband said they fired two shots into her at close range after she fell, then drove their pickup truck over her body. An opposition alliance led by a former World Bank official, Marc Bazin, said it would ask for the vote in Haiti's most populous region to be declared void.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1159637,00.html

====

A humble 37-year-old former parish priest is Haiti's president. Survivor of five assassination attempts, repudiated by the Catholic church hierarchy, expelled from the Salesian order, Jean Bertrand Aristide amply defeated Marc Bazin, the Washington favourite whose electoral campaign was financed with over US$1 million.

<snip>

Aristide's first achievement was the registration of 90% of potential voters. His government program was simple: agrarian reform, popular participation in the country's administration, priority for basic grains cultivation to feed the people and the country's modernisation.

A common rumour had it that the elections were fixed and the winner would be the pro-US candidate, Marc Bazin, a former IMF official and candidate for the right-wing Alliance for Democracy.

Aristide's program succeeded in bringing together the most diverse sectors of Haitian society, from illiterate peasants and farm workers to students, intellectuals and some sectors of the bourgeoisie. The result was a sweeping victory (67 per cent of the votes cast as opposed to 16 per cent for Bazin) which destroyed the Haitian oligarchy's scheme and the United States' plans.

<snip>

http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/1991/03/03p14.htm

President: last held 16 December 1990 (next election to be held by
December 1995); results - Rev. Jean-Bertrand ARISTIDE 67.5%, Marc BAZIN 14.2%,
Louis DEJOIE 4.9%
http://www.umsl.edu/services/govdocs/wofact93/wf940255.txt

===

<snip>

In Haiti, the IMF sponsored "free market" reforms have been carried out consistently since the Duvalier era. They have been applied in several stages since the first election of president Aristide in 1990.

The 1991 military coup, which took place 8 months following Jean Bertrand Aristide's accession to the presidency, was in part intended to reverse the government's progressive reforms and reinstate the neoliberal policy agenda of the Duvalier era.

A former World Bank official Mr. Marc Bazin was appointed Prime minister by the Military Junta in June 1992. In fact, it was the US State Department which sought his appointment.

Bazin had a track record of working for the "Washington consensus." In 1983, he had been appointed Finance Minister under the Duvalier regime. In fact he had been recommended to the Finance portfolio by the IMF: "President-for-Life Jean-Claude Duvalier had agreed to the appointment of an IMF nominee, former World Bank official Marc Bazin, as Minister of Finance". (Mining Annual Review, June, 1983). Bazin, who was considered Washington's "favorite", later ran against Aristide in the 1990 presidential elections.

Bazin, was called in by the Military Junta in 1992 to form a so-called "consensus government". It is worth noting that it was precisely during Bazin's term in office as Prime Minister that the political massacres and extra judicial killings by the CIA supported FRAPH death squadrons were unleashed, leading to the killing of more than 4000 civilians. Some 300,000 people became internal refugees, "thousands more fled across the border to the Dominican Republic, and more than 60,000 took to the high seas" (Statement of Dina Paul Parks, Executive Director, National Coalition for Haitian Rights, Committee on Senate Judiciary, US Senate, Washington DC, 1 October 2002). Meanwhile, the CIA had launched a smear campaign representing Aristide as "mentally unstable" (Boston Globe, 21 Sept 1994).

<snip>

The last elections took place in November 2000. Aristide won his second non-consecutive term amid allegations of irregularities by the US and the opposition. Marc Bazin, a former World Bank official backed by the White House, won only 14 percent of the votes. To the dismay of Washington, Aristide was president again.

<snip>

Must read article: http://translations.indymedia.org/Translations/1078462268/index_html

And this one too: http://ftaaimc.org/en/2004/03/3817.shtml

===


June 10, 1992

Marc Bazin is ratified by coup leaders as the de facto prime minister. Bazin had been the U.S.-favored presidential candidate in the 1990 elections.

June 1993

De Facto Prime Minister Marc Bazin resigns. U.S. steps up pressure on President Aristide to negotiate with coup leaders to form a new government.



http://haitireborn.org/campaigns/hsw-2003/basic-soc-ec-indicators.php
===

Lieutanant-General Raoul Cedras.


Lt-General Cedras is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Haiti (FAD'H). He has held this position since July 1991 when he was appointed by President Aristide. When Prime Minister Marc Bazin stepped down from power, Lt-General Cedras became the DeFacto leader of Haiti. He was also the Haitian representative in the New York talks with President Aristide. Lt-General Cedras has agreed to resign upon President Aristide's return to Haiti.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/1994/call-haiti-94-3_chp1.htm

===

Refugees soon started fleeing again, because the situation was deteriorating rapidly. The first Bush administration instituted a blockade to send them back. Within a couple of months, the first Bush administration also had undermined an embargo put in place by the Organization of American States (which the US supposedly supported) by allowing US-owned companies to simply ignore it. The New York Times called this "fine-tuning" the embargo to improve the restoration of democracy. Eventually, Marc Bazin, the US candidate, was in power as prime minister, with the ruling generals behind him.

During the Clinton years, not much changed in Haiti. Although Clinton attacked the first Bush administration for its inhumane policy of returning refugees, which was a clear violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, he did little to change it. Indeed, some charge that he promoted it even further.

Ultimately, there was substantial international pressure to have Aristide returned to power. Not only this, but Clinton came up with a shrewd plan to undermine his political opponents at home, who wanted Aristide to stay out, while at the same time elevate his reputation on the international stage. Aristide would be returned to power but on very strict conditions; namely, that he accept the policies of the candidate the US had supported in the 1990 Haitian election. ((Marc Bazin aka Henri Bazin - something negociated by none less than Jimmy Carter)).

The pig fiasco

In effect, Aristide was to accept a neo-liberalist program which would open Haiti up to what is known as "market forces". For example, Haitian rice producers would have to compete with US agribusiness, which happens to be very highly subsidized. As a result, Haiti, a starving island, ended up exporting 35 times more food to the US under Clinton than it did under the first Bush.

Many Haitians are well aware of the effects of globalisation on their country. Haiti's first traumatic experience of globalization was with the extermination of their Creole pigs. The experience left such an impression that whenever peasants are told that "economic reform" and privatisation will benefit them, they shake their heads and remember the pig fiasco.

<snip / This article will bring any populist to tears, especially the part about the pigs>

http://www.weblog.ro/soj/2004/03/04

===

On the eve of the election, former US Ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young, visited Aristlde and asked him to sign a letter accepting Marc Bazin, the US-backed and funded candidate, as president should Bazin win. Young reportedly said there was fear that if Aristide lost, his followers would take to the streets and reject the results. Young was said to be acting on behalf of his mentor, former president Jimmy Carter, but presumably the White House also had their finger in the pie, evidencing their concern about Aristide's charisma and potential as a leader outside their control.

Desplte a campaign marred by terror and intimidation, nearly a thousand UN and Organizatlon of American States (OAS) observers and an unusually scrupulous Haitian general insured that a relatively honest balloting took place, in which Aristide was victorious wlth 67.5 percent of the vote.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/Haiti_KH.html

==

Aristide returns
In September 1994 an opposed invasion of Haiti by US forces was averted after an agreement, brokered by former US president Jimmy Carter, was reached with the island's military leaders. The USA landed 15,000 troops without bloodshed, insisting that Haiti adopt a structural adjustment programme of privatizing assets, removing trade tariffs, and not raising the minimum wage. The FRAPH death squads were not disarmed, and US aid was targeted to counter nationalist and revolutionary movements. In October Cedras, who had agreed to relinquish power in return for an amnesty, withdrew into exile in Panama. In the same month, President Aristide returned. He gave up his priesthood to concentrate on the presidency, and nominated Michel Smarck as premier. An electoral commission was appointed to organize free elections, and in March 1995 US troops handed over to a UN peacekeeping force, which was to oversee the island's more complete transition to democracy. Prior to their arrival, there had been concern over a breakdown of law and order, after several political assassinations. The pro-Aristide Lavalas Political Organization coalition won the June and September 1995 legislative elections, amid opposition claims of electoral fraud. Claudette Werleigh was appointed premier in November, and the following month Rene Preval, a Lavalas candidate, was elected president. In February 1996, in the first peaceful handover to an elected president since independence, Preval succeeded Aristide.

http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/encyclopaedia/hutchinson/m0019787.html
===

Jean-Claude (Duvalier) was not the political operator that his father was. He liked fast cars, women, and bundles of money to indulge his interests in both. Nor did he share his father’s loyalty to the grandons. So when the U.S. began to offer assistance with the bothersome business of governance, and sweetened the deal with money, Baby Doc quickly acquiesced to the demands of U.S. capital. One of those demands was the appointment as Finance Minister of a very smooth, very articulate Haitian technocrat who worked with the World Bank, Marc Bazin. We shall see Mr. Bazin again... and again.

<snip>
The brightest and most ambitious opportunists in Haiti have seen the handwriting on the wall, and they are aligning with the financial technocrats... like Marc Bazin. This technocratic, transnational, economic managerial class is often referred to popularly as neo-liberal. It will resort to the gun, but its weapons of choice are debt and economic blackmail.

<snip>

The U.S. was casting around for a good leader, someone who could manage the transition to an elected government of technocrats, and bring Haiti on line with the rapidly globalizing economy. The State Department decided that Marc Bazin, World Bank technocrat extraodinaire, should become the first democratically elected president of Haiti. During the preceding four years of relative instability, as they crisis-managed their way through one coup after another, the State Department was spending an enormous sum through various proxies to extol the savior status of Marc Bazin to the Haitian masses.

To further ensure the palatability of Bazin, the State Department quietly supported the opposition candidacy of a widely loathed organized crime boss named Roger Lafontant. The U.S. wanted Bazin to be as obvious a choice as possible on a deliberately limited list. ((Enter that damned Leftist Aristide upsetting all their carefully laid plans))

<snip>

In June, 1992, the coup government invested Marc Bazin with the title of prime minister. He accepted. In June, 1993, just four days after the U.S. announced sanctions against coup supporters, Bazin resigned.

<snip>

Ever the neo-liberal technocrat non pariel, Clinton began studying ways to bring an election to Haiti. A deal was struck between the Clinton Administration, Aristide (whose arm was mightily twisted), and the Haitian de facto government in June, 1993 at Governor’s Island, New York. It was a masterpiece of neo-liberal sophistry. It called for reinstatement of Aristide, but also called for a number of questionable parliamentary reforms and blanket amnesty for the military. Cedras was offered a golden parachute. Aristide was required to be reinstated by October, 1993.

<snip>

Haiti shocked the New World Order neo-liberals in 1990. Aristide was offered up as a candidate for president under the banner of the Lavalas Movement-meaning The Flood. Lavalas was a potent coalition between the peasants and the petit bourgeoisie. Aristide won with such overwhelming numbers, and with such a late candidacy, that the U.S. Embassy was helpless to adjust the results. Aritside was a liberation theologian. He was a populist. And he was a nationalist. No combination of tendencies could have alarmed the U.S. more-unless Aristide had declared himself a Marxist in the bargain... which he is not.

A thoroughly chagrined U.S. delegation, including neo-liberal messiah Jimmy Carter, stalked away from the elections and began busily plotting.

<snip>

Miraculously, a delegation consisting of Jimmy Carter (again), Sam Nunn, and Colin Powell secured the rather mysterious last minute capitulation that authorized the permissive entry of U.S. troops with the signature of an illegitimate Haitian President, Emile Jonaissant. The credulous U.S. press never questioned the miraculous-ness of this whole episode.

<snip>

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/399.html

============================

I think this post is long enough. Let me just add one thing. The night before the elections in which Aristide crushed Bazin by over 67%, Carter was telling Aristide that he didn't have a chance & to please pull out of the race.

The truth about what is going on in Haiti is dirtier than all lies.

Bazin, that shit-face, is a cousin of mine by marriage. I KNEW his ugly head was going to surface in this. I am LIVID. I could have summed it all up in a paragraph but wanted to give you the links.

He's a smooth-talking, charismatic, intelligent, neo-con who will sell the entire country down the river.
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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-20-04 02:14 PM
Response to Reply #13
14. Had no idea, wouldn't have guessed.
Edited on Sat Mar-20-04 02:17 PM by JudiLyn
Related by marriage. Yeow!

So he was the Presidential candidate the people of Haiti emphatically REJECTED when the choice was available to them.

>>> The U.S. wanted Bazin to be as obvious a choice as possible on a deliberately limited list. <<<

Makes you wonder if this can EVER be corrected. There are far too many self-interested parties involved, all wrong for the country, as they are OUTSIDE the established law.
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Tinoire Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-20-04 02:38 PM
Response to Reply #14
15. Rejected, refuted, repudiated.
But the neos don't easily give up.

Yeah. Duvalier's Finance Minister in 1982. US choice. Trust me, it's nothing my side of the family is proud of.

==

Furthermore, Aristide's new "open door government" seems above all to be opening the door to neoliberal economic policies against which the Haitian people have protested for 15 years. Since unveiling his economic program over a year ago, Aristide has proposed some kind of "third way," a magic formula to somehow please Washington and multilateral lending institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) while still defending the people against the well-known ravages of neoliberal policies. Ironically, Marc Bazin, against whose neoliberal prescriptions Aristide successfully campaigned in 1990, is today telling Aristide that his "third way" is not feasible. "Let's not do the adjustment with one step in and one step out, one day saying yes, the next saying no," Bazin said in an interview with Radio Metropole last week. "Because the final result is sacrifice without benefit." Is Bazin going to implement Aristide's vision, or is Aristide going to implement Bazin's? Is the tail going to wag the dog? Is the Chérestal government is going to fully enter into the economic policy against which Haiti's democratic and popular sectors have so bitterly fought since 1986?

http://www.haiti-progres.com/2001/sm010307/xeng0307.htm

===

I was googling a little for you.. Broke my heart. Will have to call my mom tonight who is an elitist with a heart of gold. Unlike people like Andy Apaid who aren't real Haitians (I mean really- Andy? we have no such nick-names), she truly, as an intellecutual Leftist long-time Democrat, cares about the people but she is having a hard time reconciling just how callous people like Bazin are because she grew up with them. She only hates their goals unlike me who just hates them because of their goals. Yeow doesn't even begin to describe it lol.


Annan Report Fuels False Crisis

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan lent tacit support to Haiti's Democratic Convergence (CD) opposition front this week in a report to the U.N. General Assembly, released May 21.

In the agnostic, innuendo-laden language so favored by U.N. diplomats, Annan portrayed the CD as legitimate and representative and encouraged internationally-mediated negotiations between it and the Haitian government. But it is evident to the vast majority of Haitians (and even the most casual observer) that the CD is nothing more than a tool of Washington to politically destabilize Haiti and prod President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his Lavalas Family party (FL) to the right.

Throughout the report, Annan portrays the Haitian government's timid responses to CD provocations as "intimidation" while calling the CD's seditious and illegal declaration of a "parallel government" last February merely "questionable."

Meanwhile, presidential and senate elections held on Nov. 26, 2000 "generated little public interest," according to Annan, even though the sole monitoring bodies, the 25-member International Coalition of Independent Observers (ICIO) and a national observer group, concurred with the 60.5% turnout figure of Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council (CEP). Annan favored the assessment of a 4-member CARICOM team and "local and international news media" (which mostly took its information from the CD) which set participation between 10% and 20%. Annan echoes the charge of "Haiti's main international partners" (i.e., the U.S. and France) that last year's elections were held "without a credible, independent electoral council."

<snip>

Meanwhile, faced with outrage from thousands of local elected officials, Aristide sought to backtrack from some of his headlong concessions of recent weeks. In a meeting with local officials last week he said that the May 21, 2000 elections were not negotiable. "You are all elected," Aristide told the gathering on May 16 at the National Palace. "Everyone should remember to never dare to change what the masses with their ballot have decided."

<snip>

http://www.haiti-progres.com/2001/sm010523/xeng0523.htm



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seemslikeadream Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-20-04 05:21 PM
Response to Original message
16. URGENT ACTION ALERT Organizational Petition on Haiti
For organizations and institutions working for global justice

Dear friends and supporters of Haiti:

We are all deeply troubled by the daily horrors of civil unrest in cities across Haiti costing the lives of hundreds and thousands of Haitians. The overthrow of the democratically elected government of Haiti by a superpower like the U.S. is a dangerous precedent. We need to send a clear message to the Bush administration that such actions are unacceptable, and we will hold accountable those responsible for these acts of injustice.

You will find below a petition letter that expresses our sentiments of outrage on the act by the U.S. government to depose the leader of a sovereign state. President Jean Bertrand Aristide is the choice of the Haitian people, and only they should have the final say on electing their leader.

We ask you to sign the petition asking for immediate and unconditional re-instatement of President Aristide of Haiti. We are also demanding an investigation into the role of the Bush administration in violating international laws. We will use this letter to support current demands for Congressional investigation.

Congressmembers Barbara Lee and John Conyers, along with 24 of their colleagues, have proposed the TRUTH Act, which calls for such an investigation. (Non-profit organizations need not be concerned about violating the "advocacy on legislation" clause of their 501(c)(3). The petition does not mention this or any other specific bill before Congress.)

http://www.sfbayview.com/031704/urgentaction031704.shtml
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seemslikeadream Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-20-04 05:27 PM
Response to Original message
17. MOISE: Haiti's Murderous Army Reborn
Mar 20, 2004
by Jean Charles Moise

I am the mayor of Milo, a district of about 50,000 people near Cap Haitian. When I was elected nine years ago, at the age of 28, I was the youngest to serve in that office in Haiti's modern history. I've traveled in the United States on speaking tours, telling Americans about how we were building democracy in Haiti under the Aristide government. In late February my district came under attack by anti-Aristide forces and I fled for my life. From where I am now -- hiding in the woods -- I see the old Haitian army is back.

Those they don't kill, they lock up in containers, because they burned down the jails. The kind of containers you put on ships.

The situation is different here from what I hear about in Port-au-Prince, where you have the multinational force of American, Canadian, Chilean soldiers. In Cap Haitian you have the former Haitian military. There are no police any more, so they are the ones who are law. They come into your home. They take you, they beat you up, they kill you. They burn down homes. They do anything they want, because they are the only law in town.

The journalists are in Port-au-Prince, but here in the north no one is reporting what's going on, that the former Haitian military is killing people. They are killing about 50 people a day in Cap Haitian. It's happening not just in the northern department but also in the central plateau, in the Artibone region.

Can you imagine that on Monday at 2 p.m. the former military declared a curfew that would start at 4 p.m.? The peasants, many of them are poor and do not have a radio, so how could they hear of this curfew? So what happened at 4 p.m.? The former military took to the streets and anyone they saw on the streets they shot. This is the kind of stuff that is going on. Can you imagine this?.....
http://www.jihadunspun.com/intheatre_internal.php?article=97624&list=/home.php&
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struggle4progress Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Mar-21-04 01:15 AM
Response to Original message
18. kick
:kick:
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