Supporters
of Jean-Bertrand Aristide's government are convinced that
the U.S. has decided to do a "regime change" in
Haiti before the world's first Black Republic celebrates its
200th anniversary, in 2004. Frustrated that a three-year,
American-led aid embargo against Haiti has failed to topple
the popularly elected Aristide, the Bush men are escalating
their proxy terror campaign against Lavalas party activists
and the island nation's fragile infrastructure, all the while
threatening to further strangle the economy.
Worldwide
celebrations have already begun in honor of the slave insurrection
that defeated Napoleon's armies to establish Haitian independence
in 1804. The Bush administration, probably the most symbol-obsessed
regime in modern U.S. history, has deployed its diplomatic,
military and propaganda resources to prepare an alternative
scenario.
"The
symbolism of having a populist government in Haiti, that represents
the interests of the poor black majority, is intolerable to
US foreign policy, especially as all the parallels with the
history of US slavery are sure to be drawn," said a well-placed
observer who must remain nameless due to the atmosphere of
terror in the country. "They want a subservient client
in power when the bicentennial comes down. They cannot control
Aristide, therefore they must do as they always have in these
situations, destroy him and his government by any means necessary."
Early
this month, at least 20 commandos attacked a hydroelectric
power plant on Haiti's central plateau, killing two security
guards and setting the control room afire. It is common knowledge
that incursions originate across the border in the Dominican
Republic where, according to a Dominican priest known as Father
J, members of the former Haitian military regime exercise
mafia-like control over a million of their destitute countrymen.
Father J has worked on behalf of Haitian human rights issues
for the past 25 years. He reports that sectors of the Dominican
military protect the Haitian mafia's operations, which fund
the paramilitary incursions.
A
May 10 Associated Press report tends to confirm that Haiti's
armed opposition operates with near-impunity in the Dominican
Republic. Under pressure from the Haitian government, authorities
on the Dominican side of the border arrested and then released
five men in connection with the attack on the hydroelectric
plant:
The
man Haitian authorities have accused of plotting to overthrow
Jean-Bertrand Aristide's government says he supports a coup
but isn't planning one.
Guy
Philippe told The Associated Press that he wasn't plotting
Aristide's ouster but that the time for a peaceful solution
has passed. He wouldn't say, however, whether he would take
up arms in the future. Dominican authorities released Philippe,
a 35-year-old former Haitian police chief known for his
flashy cars, expensive taste and strong-armed tactics to
battle crime in the impoverished Caribbean nation, Thursday
after finding no evidence he and four others were conspiring
against the Haitian government. Haitian authorities told
their Dominican counterparts Philippe and others were plotting
against the Haitian government from neighboring Dominican
Republic.
"I
would support a coup," Philippe said in Spanish during
an interview in a Santo Domingo hotel. "We have to
get rid of the dictator." ...
Declining
to say how he makes a living or what he does to spend his
time in the Dominican Republic, Philippe said the international
community needed to do more to push Aristide from power,
but he said he would not support an armed invasion.
On
the day Philippe was detained on the Dominican side of the
border, police raided the 
house
of Port-au-Prince mayoral candidate Judith Roy of the Convergence
opposition. They claimed to have "found assault weapons,
ammunitions, and plans to attack the National Palace and Aristide's
suburban residence," said the Associated Press. Haitian
authorities say Roy is close to Philippe, the former police
chief of Cap Haitian.
There
is evidence that the Republican Party is directly involved
in plotting Aristide's overthrow. Stanley Lucas, an International
Republican Institute operative based in the Dominican Republic,
met with Philippe and his gang on Dominican soil, three months
ago. Inside Haiti, the Institute functions as a political
support group for the Convergence, a group of small opposition
parties on the island.
Open
subversion at the OAS
Private
aid organizations, many of them with close ties to the opposition
Convergence, have
scaled back their work among the poor - suddenly, and with
few explanations either to Haitians or the largely American
donor public. At the Organization of American States, through
which the U.S. has attempted to legitimize its campaign against
Aristide's government, American diplomats cynically point
to the suffering of the Haitian people as an excuse for intensifying
restrictions on aid. According to an April 28 Haitian Press
Agency (AHP) report, demands for Aristide's ouster circulate
openly among the OAS diplomats. "One document's author
suggested that it would be best if the situation kept deteriorating,
saying that any aid should be blocked until 2005 in order
to eliminate the party in power, Fanmi Lavalas [Lavalas Family],
which will be of no help to the population, according to him,"
AHP
reported.
Caribbean
Community (Caricom) nations have so far blocked U.S. efforts
to gain OAS approval for even harsher sanctions against Haiti.
Aristide's
government has been forced to choose between servicing its
debt or providing basic services to the people - a Catch-22
made in Washington. In it's April 23 - 29 edition, the weekly
Haiti
Progres reported:
Finance
Minister Gustave Faubert said this week that the Haitian
government no longer could continue to make payments on
its debt arrears to multilateral lending institutions because
of Haiti's dwindling foreign reserves.
"We
have been paying out more money than we are receiving, which
is not something normal," he said in an interview with
Radio Galaxie. "The level of the country's net foreign
cash reserves has become untenable, so the government has
taken the decision, particularly for the IDB [InterAmerican
Development Bank] and the World Bank, to use that money
instead to carry out projects which benefit the population,
which is suffering a great deal and is very hungry."
It
appears the U.S. purpose is to create an environment of chaos
and government impotence in Haiti, allowing Washington to
declare the nation a "failed state," thus setting
the stage for some form of American takeover. By now, the
pretexts should be familiar to all: U.S. national security,
with "humanitarian" concerns thrown in for good
measure. Having starved Haiti for three years through its
influence among the world's donor nations, and with the clock
ticking towards the 2004 celebrations, Washington steps up
the "contra"-type offensive while designating Haiti
a "staging point" for terrorist infiltration of
the U.S. (See "Ashcroft
Targets Haitians as Threat," 
,
May 8.)
The
Bush men imagine themselves at the podium in Port-au-Prince
next year, surrounded by dancing Haitians celebrating their
"liberation" from the elected government of Jean-Bertrand
Aristide. These are the last people we want to see grinning
at the 200th anniversary of the world's first Black Republic.
Danny
Glover targeted
TransAfrica
Forum's latest report on Haiti, "Withheld
International Aid: The U.S. Weapon of Mass Disruption"
is now available on the organization's website. Executive
Director Bill Fletcher has also issued an "Urgent Action
Appeal" on behalf of actor-activist Danny Glover, TransAfrica's
board chairman, a vocal advocate for Haiti and opponent of
the Iraq war. Fletcher is leading a "Dial In For Democracy
and to Support Danny Glover" campaign:
Danny
Glover, along with millions of other citizens and residents
of the United States, dared to express their disagreement
with administration policy on Iraq, and in general with
the Bush Administration's rogue foreign policy. The response
has been an attempt to have the telecommunications giant
MCI distance itself from Danny Glover who has signed on
to a series of television spots. In fact, the political
Right is organizing a campaign demanding that MCI formally
terminate its relationship with Danny.
The
attack on Danny takes place at the same time that other
courageous public figures are facing the wrath of the administration
and their allies on the political Right for daring to challenge
US foreign policy on Iraq, Cuba and countless other situations.
The attempt to isolate and destroy political opponents is
reminiscent of the McCarthy era. It happened to the great
Paul Robeson in the 1950s, and from that lesson we should
learn that this can NEVER be allowed to happen again ....
TransAfrica
Forum calls upon its allies, friends and families, as well
as friends and supporters of Danny Glover, to contact MCI
immediately.
Let
it be known that you appreciate MCI for its commitment to
democratic values which are the bedrock principle of good
corporate citizenship. Urge the company to hold firm to
those values by refusing to buckle to pressure and continue
to engage Danny Glover as a spokesperson.
Let
your voices be heard!
TransAfrica
provided the following MCI contact information:
Anyone
can call the PR office to comment:
800/644-NEWS or 202/736-6700
MCI
Customers can call Customer Service at
800/444-3333
Email
can be done through the website - there is an
electronic submission form:
http://consumer.mci.com/customer_service/ContactUs.jsp
The
"Get-Glover" campaign is spearheaded by the far-right
attack dog Judicial
Watch, a truly primitive outfit. "MCI must fire Glover,"
howled Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. Outraged at Glover's
support for lifting the U.S. embargo against Cuba, Fitton
threw a ... fit. "Any more than it should have a spokesman
supporting Osama bin Laden, it can't have a spokesman supporting
terrorist Castro," he raged.
Sex
less a factor in African AIDS
The
religious Right struggles to hold AIDS relief to Africa hostage
to sexual abstinence programs that preach to the hundreds
of millions threatened by the pandemic. However, a report
in Discover
magazine suggests that excessive moralizing misses the
point. Economic anthropologist David Gisselquist has concluded
after 20 years of study that "unsafe injections, blood
transfusions, and other medical procedures may account for
most AIDS transmission in African adults. Their analysis indicates
that no more than 35 percent of HIV in that population is
spread through sex," said the magazine.
It
has always seemed suspect that epidemiologists would insist
that African sex practices were so uniquely bizarre or brutal
as to emerge as the key factor in the holocaust ravaging the
continent. How different can "African" sex be, that
it must be viewed as some intractable obstacle to containing
the disease? What about the abysmal health infrastructure
south of the Sahara - could that be a huge part of the problem?
Gisselquist
remembers his travels around Africa as a consultant for the
World Bank. "They give you a syringe and say, 'Carry
this with you, and avoid all the health care that you can.'
We've been paying for third-world health care while advising
ourselves to avoid it," he said. Gisselquist found that
the mothers of 39 percent of HIV-positive Congolese babies
were uninfected by the disease. The infants had probably been
exposed to the virus by substandard health facilities. In
Zimbabwe, said the article, "HIV incidence rose by 12
percent per year during the 1990s, even as sexually transmitted
diseases sank by 25 percent overall and condom use rose among
high-risk groups." Zimbabweans got the message, but the
disease kept spreading.
Poverty
and lack of development are the great abettors of AIDS in
Africa - a fact that should have been obvious to anyone not
intent on condemning Africans to some special, subhuman zone
of amorality. It is clear that a racialist view of sex and
AIDS is as virulent a threat to Africa as the disease, itself.
Gisselquist's findings were recently published in the International
Journal of STD & AIDS.
Cyber
vote fraud
Jim
Crow is lurking in cyber-space, preparing to steal your vote,
digitally. American reporter Greg Palast, who had to move
to London to escape corporate censorship of U.S. news, has
teamed up with Martin Luther King III to issue a "new
nationwide call and petition drive to restore and protect
the rights of all Americans and monitor the implementation
of frighteningly ill-conceived new state and federal voting
'reform' laws."
George
Bush liked the 2000 election results in Florida so much, he
had his party push through Congress a law that makes the Sunshine
State the national elections standard. Palast and King published
an excellent piece in the Baltimore Sun, explaining the looming
"Floridation" of America and asking the question,
"Do African-Americans have the unimpeded right to vote
in the United States?"
rates this a Must
Read.
