Last month CNTodd at Freiheit und Weissen had a brilliant inspiration to start a ten-day blogswarm about Haiti. I joined because I agreed with him that the destruction of Haiti by corpofascist forces of globalization is a story that doesn't get nearly the attention it deserves in Blogtopia and you know, be the change you want to see, right? I made it through the ten days and kept going for a few weeks after that but my last post on Haiti was almost two weeks ago. I've hit a wall.
When I started writing about Haiti, I couldn't find enough information. I spent hours looking for sites devoted to stories told by Haitians instead of whatever is left over after information gets run through the corporate media sausage grinder. Now that I've found some reliable but conflicting sources, I'm paralysed. Contrary to what my public image may be, I'm not a bomb thrower. I like to believe I have a fact right when I write about it, although I allow that I could certainly be mistaken. As I've gotten deeper into the Haiti story, it's getting harder to keep the players and their stories straight. The same person, who on one site is claimed to be a hero of the people, is reviled on another site as a murderer of innocents. Aristide himself is a good example of this kind of figure.
I'm coming around to the realization that there isn't too much I can do about wanting to know and report the sacred truth. It isn't going to happen. But I don't want to stop writing about Haiti because I believe that what we are doing there in the name of corpo-globalization is really just a clever form of fascism and is a crime equal to what is being perpetrated in Iraq. We should know what is going on in our names - in fact, in the names of the world since it is the U.N. which is facilitating much of the killing and oppression that is paving the way for a corporate takeover of the country.
So here's the deal. What follows is the most comprehensive list of links I can put together about Haiti. I'd encourage you to jump in and start sorting out any information you can find. Add to the list if you know something I left out. Why? Haitian elections are coming up in the fall. I'm convinced that they will be shams designed to install a government owned by corporate forces but no matter what happens, they will throw Haiti into the media spotlight for a short time anyway as we watch more of BushCo-brand Democracy on the March. You'll want to hit that story running. Believe me when I tell you, it's a doozy.
History of Haiti:
Haitian Revolution: The Haitian Revolution was a watershed moment in Carribbean history. The historical significance it is undoubtedly still in the minds of people who want to enslave third world workers under the banner of globalization:
The impact of the Haitian Revolution was both immediate and widespread. The antislavery fighting immediately spawned unrest throughout the region, especially in communities of Maroons in Jamaica, and among slaves in St. Kitts. It sent a wave of immigrants flooding outward to the neighboring islands, and to the United States and Europe. It revitalized agricultural production in Cuba and Puerto Rico. As Alfred Hunt has shown, Haitian emigrants also profoundly affected American language, religion, politics, culture, cuisine, architecture, medicine, and the conflict over slavery, especially in Louisiana. Most of all, the revolution deeply affected the psychology of the whites throughout the Atlantic world. The Haitian Revolution undoubtedly accentuated the sensitivity to race, color, and status across the Caribbean.
Among the political and economic elites of the neighboring Caribbean states, the example of a black independent state as a viable alternative to the Maroon complicated their domestic relations.
News Sources:
Haiti Action
Haiti Progress
Windows on Haiti
Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti
ZNet HaitiWatch
Investigating Imperialism: Haiti News
You can also read the corporate media but you have to keep a weather eye out for corporate bias and loaded words like "bandits," which is code for Lavalas supporters. Contrast the corporate media coverage of the massacre in Cite Soleil with what you'll find on HaitiAction, for instance. It's night and day.
People and Players: (tip of the iceberg, I'm afraid)
Lavalas: Aristede's political party and current target of Latortue's coup government via U.N. troops and the Haitian police force. It's unclear whether Lavalas will participate in any meaningful way in the elections. Some members are calling for a boycott since the elections are doomed to be unfair, an idea supported by the jailing of most of the most prominent and popular Lavalas leaders. Some Lavalas members have registered as candidates for the fall. Jailed priest, Fr. Jean-Juste has announced that he will run if he can get the approval of Aristede and survive his most recent imprisonment.
Aristide: democratically-elected president of Haiti, currently living in South Africa in exile after US-sponsored coup
Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste: considered to be the de facto Lavallas leader, currently in jail on charges of "incendiary sermons" and "public clamor." (UPDATE 2/6: Fr. Gerry is in Miami receiving treatment for pneumonia and leukemia.) Here is part of his latest message from prison:
I now have discovered so much support for the Haitian people and me from people all over the world. I am in awe. I add my strength to those who stand all over the world for the rights of everyone whatever color, whatever creed, whatever nationality. To Cite Soleil, to Bel-Air, Veye Yo, the 10th department, the Lavalas family, to all of you around the world, to the churches especially my own St. Clare's, I say to you "Chapo Ba!" (I tip my hat!)
There is a great fraternity in jail and with the poor. In jail we pray loudly - day and night.
Our spirits are uplifted when we hear about your work for Haiti, because we hear hope coming. We hear hope coming and we know our victory for human rights and respect and democracy will be total one day.
Yvon Neptune: a former prime minister under Aristide. Currently in jail where he's been for over a year without trial.
Kevin Pina: journalist and film maker His detailed, well-sourced articles are frequently published at Black Commentator. Read his story, The Bush Administration's End Game for Haiti, in the Black Commentator for an outstanding explanation of Haiti's current political situation and how it ties back to Washington. In it, he gives lists of names and background information that are invaluable. It's part three of a series you shouldn't miss.
Bill Quiqley: law professor at Loyola University New Orleans School of Law, has visited Haiti four times in the last three months as one of the attorneys representing the imprisoned Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste. He writes a lot about Haiti. His access to political prisoner Fr. Jean-Juste is coming in handy now.
Mario Joseph: Fr. Jean-Juste's other attorney
Guy Phillippe: rebel leader who overthrew Aristide with the help of foreign financing and other aid
Gerard Latortue: appointed president of Haiti's coup government.
MINUSTAH: the UN military mission in Haiti
Haiti Democracy Project: privately funded NGO. According to its website it's going to save Haiti. According to Jeff Sprague, writing at Narcosphere, it's a whitewash. The new charger d'affaires for Haiti, Timothy Carney, served on the board of HDP until his appointment to his current post. While at HDP he helped write the report that Spraque criticizes as one-sided.
Kevin Pina writes this about the HDP membership:
This impressive list is the crème de la crème of Washington’s “big thinkers” on Haiti and they are out for nothing short of regime change. Former Ambassador Carney summed up their position in a Reuters interview November 27, 2002, “The big question is whether Aristide is going to understand that he has no future,” said Timothy Carney, a former U.S. ambassador to Haiti. "Without massive reform, Haiti is once again headed for the kind of chaos that has intermittently dogged its history.” It is now clear that HDP’s version of “massive reform” is predicated upon the removal from office of a constitutionally elected president, and the Lavalas movement of the majority of the poor that supports him, whose reputation they have systematically sought to destroy.
Group 184: the official opposition to Lavalas. Again, Kevin Pina:
a new public relations face for the official opposition, the "Coalition of 184 Civic Institutions," a laundry list of Haitian NGOs funded by USAID and/or the IRI (International Republican Institute), as well as by the Haitian-American Chamber of Commerce and other groups.”
International Republican Institute: A group through which USAID funnels millions of dollars in "aid" to Haiti. From Salon:
By the time of Curran's departure, IRI's Haiti program was flush with a $1.2 million grant from USAID for 2003 and 2004. According to IRI's Scott, "roughly $200,000" of that grant was used to junket over 600 Haitian opposition figures to the Dominican Republic and the U.S. to meet with IRI. With
IRI's help, they formed a new coalition called Group of 184 representing the "civil society" wing of the opposition. IRI currently hosts
Group of 184's home page on its Haiti policy Web site, which features
photos of anti-Aristide demonstrations in Port-au-Prince last March.
And Scott acknowledged that "IRI played an advisory role in Group of
184's formation."
and did business with some unsavory characters:
Others describe
more formal ties between IRI and the insurgents. Jean Michel Caroit,
chief correspondent in the Dominican Republic for the French daily Le
Monde, says he saw Phillippe's political advisor, Paul Arcelin,
at an IRI meeting at Hotel Santo Domingo in December 2003. Caroit, who
was having drinks in the lobby with several attendees, said the meeting
was convened "quite discreetly." His account dovetailed with that of a
Haitian journalist who told Salon on condition of anonymity that
Arcelin often attended IRI meetings in Santo Domingo as Convergence's
representative to the Dominican Republic.
Dumas Simeus: Texas businessman who plans to run for president of Haiti in the fall. The story at the link has the appropriately fawning tone for a corporate media profile of the candidate anointed by the Brothers BushCo. (UPDATE: Simeus is out of the race because he is not a Haitian citizen)
Renee Préval: former ally of Aristide, favorite of the poor, currently expected to win the Feb. 7 elections. From Wikipedia:
Préval is currently running as an independent candidate in the scheduled Haitian elections, 2006.
During his campaigne, he has sought to distance himself from any former
association with the Lavalas party. Preval supports the current
occupation of Haiti by U.N. forces, saying they "should stay as long as
it is necessary",[1]
in contrast to Aristide and many members of Lavalas who denounce the
U.N. forces and accuse them of carrying out a campaigne of repression
and violence at the behest of the U.S., France, and Canada.
Marc Bezin: (from Wikipedia) is a former World Bank official, former United Nations functionary and Haitian Minister of Finance and Economy under the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier. He was prime minister of Haiti appointed on June 4, 1992 by the military government that had seized power on September 30, 1991.
He was considered the favorite candidate of the George H.W. Bush Administration and the borgeoisie population of Haiti
when the country could no longer last in foreign relations as a
military dictatorship and had to open the government up to free
elections in 1990. Bazin was seen as a front runner if the elections
were to happen before the Left in Haiti had time to reorganize. He
received 14% of the vote, Jean-Bertrand Aristide
winning with 67%. Aristide's popularity was with the people, not with
the powers that be, and he was deposed of less than nine months into
his term. In June of 1992, the military officials who had led the coup,
appointed Bazin as acting prime minister. Washington's
initial response was he held the post illegally, but they soon warmed
up to him and pressured Aristide to negotiate with the military and
Bazin.
Websites and Blogs:
LaLuchita
UnCapitalist Journal Haiti Forum
Marguerite Laurent
Free Haiti at Freiheit und Wissen
Haiti Report
The Heritik
Fact-esque
Ruminations of a Haitian Mofo
Good articles:
Unspinning Haiti's 'Spiral of Violence a look at Canadian media's coverage of the war in Haiti. With the US and France, Canada is the other international powerhouse behind the destruction of Haiti. With U.N. troops to do the dirty work, this coalition has no problem working together in their own Baghdad West.
Murdering the poor: Canadian tax dollars at work " A fast-growing movement in Canada is demanding that the Canadian government support the return of constitutional democracy in Haiti."
Naomi Klein has two good stories on Haiti. The first is Aristide in Exile, which makes this point: Poor Haitians are being slaughtered not for being “violent,” as we so often hear, but for being militant; for daring to demand the return of their elected president. The second is her examination of Disaster Capitalism, which is definitely at work in Haiti:
It has been much the same story in Haiti, following the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In exchange for a $61 million loan, the bank is requiring "public-private partnership and governance in the education and health sectors," according to bank documents--i.e., private companies running schools and hospitals. Roger Noriega, US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, has made it clear that the Bush Administration shares these goals. "We will also encourage the government of Haiti to move forward, at the appropriate time, with restructuring and privatization of some public sector enterprises," he told the American Enterprise Institute on April 14, 2004.
These are extraordinarily controversial plans in a country with a powerful socialist base, and the bank admits that this is precisely why it is pushing them now, with Haiti under what approaches military rule. "The Transitional Government provide[s] a window of opportunity for implementing economic governance reforms...that may be hard for a future government to undo," the bank notes in its Economic Governance Reform Operation Project agreement. For Haitians, this is a particularly bitter irony: Many blame multilateral institutions, including the World Bank, for deepening the political crisis that led to Aristide's ouster by withholding hundreds of millions in promised loans. At the time, the Inter-American Development Bank, under pressure from the State Department, claimed Haiti was insufficiently democratic to receive the money, pointing to minor irregularities in a legislative election. But now that Aristide is out, the World Bank is openly celebrating the perks of operating in a democracy-free zone.
That last phrase, "democracy-free zone" really gets me and keeps me trying to get out the word. Read about Haiti. Write letters. People aren't just living without democracy, they're dying.
Recent Comments