BlackCommentator.com - July 9, 2009

Not a word from President Barack Obama, the man of CHANGE, or the newly appointed UN Special Envoy, former President Bill Clinton, man from HOPE, condemning the UN’s shooting of, as Marguerite “Ezili Danto” Laurent reports, “peaceful, unarmed protesters in Haiti” June 18, 2009. The shooting took place at the funeral for Father Jean Juste outside the Port au Prince Cathedral.

Laurent, Human Rights Lawyer and President of Haitian Lawyer Leadership Network, writes that mourners were shot at as they exited the cathedral. People immediately took the body of Father Juste to protect it from being vandalized. Mourners also picked up the body of a fallen protester and “marched it to the National Palace” while UN soldiers continued to shoot into the crowd.

This isn’t the first attack on the people carried out by MINUSTAH, the United Nation’s Stabilization Mission in Haiti. The UN “peacekeeping” mission patrol the poor neighborhoods “in armored personnel vehicles, [with] their automatic weapons, rather than their hands, extended to the Haitian people,” write Mario Joseph and Brian Coconnon, Americas. IRC-online.org. According to the School of Americas Watch, The UN troops were particularly disturbed by the poor and the religious priests (like Father Juste) who actually served to protect the poor. In December, January, and February, 2007, repeated assaults on the crowd in the poor neighborhoods of Cite Soleil left dozens of women, children and elderly dead. A UN spokesperson claimed that the 22,000 bullets fired into the crowd were meant for “gang members.”

From this window, Haiti is the American Revolution. Haiti is the face of revolution in the Southern Hemisphere of the Americas. Haiti is the face of enslaved rebellion against capitalist tyrants.

The man of hope, the man who dared to speak of the poor and working classes desire for change, received 92% of the vote in Haiti. It is 2000. Jean-Bertrand Aristide has won re-election to the presidency. In the U.S. Bush II has won his election to presidency through vote fraud. Masses of Black Americans had their votes stolen or their names illegally removed from the polls.

The wealthy class of white and mulattoes in Haiti, Randall Robinson explains, “did not make a public political religion of their treatment of black Haitians. As the ruling class, they “hid behind its black puppet dictators” (An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President). But former military soldiers, on behalf of the ruling class, waged guerrilla attacks and stirred revolts, creating unrest in Haiti. The U.S. and International press blamed Aristide for the chaos. The people don’t want Aristide!

9-11 allowed for a more aggressive approach to Haiti. Left ideology is a “terrorist” ideology, and therefore, undemocratic!

“Democratic forces” magically embodied the vocal ruling class and their guerrillas. “Mr. Aristide and his cronies persist in perverting the democratic order in that country,” according to the Haiti Democratic Project in June 2003.

In February 2004, Secretary of State Colin Powell assures Aristide that the “thugs,” the ruling class guerrillas will not “remove a democratically elected government” (Robinson). In another call, Robinson writes, Powell warns: “Guy Philippe” is coming to kill Aristide and the U.S. “will do nothing to help him.” On February 29, 2004, the U.S. Marines came and swooped Aristide and his wife out of the country in the middle of the night. CIA-operative Michel Francois, Chief of Haiti’s Police, led the coup against Aristide, according to School of Americas Watch. Francois, trained at the School of Americas (SOA), turned power over to Raoul Cedras, (graduate of the SOA).

In the place of the man of hope came death. A paramilitary UN contingent, on a mission to “stabilize” Haiti along with U.S. State Department troops now imposed punishment to Haiti’s poor, Haiti’s people who desired democracy. According to the Haiti Action Committee, some 8,000 people were killed and 35,000 girls and women were raped in Port-au-Prince by the “Washington-backed government.”

But Jean-Bertrand Aristide was a bad man for Haiti.

Haiti is still not stabilized and in October 2009, the UN Stabilizing Mission is due to come to “an end” - so we are told.

Keep that date in mind - October 2009!

In the years since Aristide’s removal by the U.S., the Lavalas Party, representing 70 percent of the poor in Haiti, have been harassed, incarcerated, or killed, and in the U.S. and International press, the voice of the people has been muted in favor of images of violence and unrest, labeled Lavalas - terrorist. The soldiers of misdirection and the wealthy class’ police and military forces want the international public to associate Lavalas with economic terrorism. Haiti has been economically ravished but not by Lavalas, the representatives of the people. Under Haitian President Preval, writes independent journalist Kevin Pina in “Lavalas Flexes its Muscles in Haiti,” the poor have been “disillusioned by his initiation of the garment industry and privatization agenda” and his complicity with U.S. political and economic tyranny.

Excluded from representing Haiti’s majority poor and working class, Lavalas organizers successfully waged a boycott (Operation Closed Door) of the April 19, 2009 Senatorial elections. Only 10% of Port-Au-Prince’s residents voted and the vote was as low as 3% nationwide, Pina reports. The boycott, Operation Closed Door, “revealed the ruling classes” imposed brand of “democracy.” Operation Closed Door spokesperson charges U.S. Ambassador Janet Sanderson “for pressuring the Preval administration to issue arrests warrants for 42 of the organizers of the election boycott.” According to the spokesperson, Sanderson publicly announced an investigation of the boycott organizers. As a result, Pina reports, Rene Civil, leader of the Lavalas’ Mobilization and Communication committees, and other Lavalas organizers are now in hiding while the ruling class and U.S. overseers have “invented a new and bizarre charge” against Lavalas - “obstruction of democracy.”

Nonetheless, the people still called for the return of Aristide, and Rene Civil announced: No Lavalas - no elections!

An alliance consisting of the Popular Initiative and other groups have joined with Lavalas at a press conference in Spring 2009 to announce plans to “step up pressure for the return of Jean-Bertrand Aristide from exile,” writes Pina. The alliance declared “May and June months of mass mobilization against elections that exclude Lavalas” and vowed to continue “to fight what they call the ‘growing misery and poverty as a result of the removal of our democratically elected president on Feb. 29, 2004.’”

Organized citizens stayed away from the polls on June 21, 2009. The second successful boycott of the Senatorial run-off election emptied the streets and the election polls were free of long lines. No Aristide - no vote! The streets were empty and polls deserted not because the people feared “violence,” as reported by the Associated Press. The people and the Lavalas leadership are strategizing the struggle against the Goliath to the North and its surrogate representatives in Haiti. “Lavalas is clearly the predominant political organization,” HaitiAction.Net. The only thing people wanted to know is when President Aristide will return to Haiti!

The people want their democratically elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide. What are the U.S. and the International response: Bill Clinton - the man from Hope, Arkansas to aid the UN in stabilizing Haiti!

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton and UN head Ban Ki-Moon Ban visit Haiti in March 2009. By May, according to the AP, Clinton racked up $324 million dollars from Washington donors and investors to aid Haiti, the “poorest nation in the Hemisphere” that has been “mired for decades in political and social turmoil.”

May 19, 2009, Ban Ki-Moon, UN Head, makes it official: Bill Clinton is the UN’s Special Envoy to Haiti charged with helping the “stabilizing” efforts with attracting private and government investment for the ravaged country.

October 2009 is around the corner. The U.S. wants to devote its attention to “stabilizing” Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. It doesn’t want to worry about poor and working class Haitians and the strong organization of Lavalas!

Dark Side policies:

Haitians, Randall Robinson writes, know their history. “The Haitian peasants may have had few material possession to speak of, but they kn[o]w what their slave ancestors had done to the French, to the English and to the Spanish.” Haiti’s “liberation” from France came with economical tyranny. As Noam Chomsky writes in “U.S.-Haiti,” March 2004, Z Net, the U.S. supported the right of France to charge Haiti for liberating itself from tyranny, and the U.S. supported France’s right to charge Haiti a “huge indemnity,” a burden that Haiti “has never escaped.”

The U.S.’s policies toward Haiti are in direct response to its “fear of democracy” (Bellegarde-Smith cited in Chomsky), fear of the re-emerging Left in the Americas. As Chomsky writes, the “threat of democracy” in 1991 was “even more ominous” after “the international financial institutions (World Bank, IADB) to Aristide's programs, which awakened traditional concerns over the “virus” effect of successful independent development.” Marc Bazin, the champion of the ruling class was the U.S.’s choice for president. What chance did democracy in Haiti under Aristide have with a neighbor like the United States?

Bush I redefined “democracy” in Haiti. As Chomsky writes, he considered the “democratic forces,” those “wealthy elites and the business sectors, who, along with the murderers and torturers of the military and paramilitaries, who had been lauded by the current incumbents in Washington, in their Reaganite phase, for their progress in ‘democratic development,’ justifying lavish new aid.” In the meantime, Haitians, mainly supporters of Aristide who tried to escape the violence of the ruling class, were turned around at U.S. shores. After the 1991 U.S. backed-military coup that overthrew Aristide, the Organization of American States “declared an embargo on Haiti’s ruling class. The U.S., under Bush II, declared the embargo undemocratic and violated it “by exempting US firms.”

Then Bill Clinton becomes president in 1991: a re-packaged Pax Americana soldier concealing corporate interest under the guise of a humanitarian operation! The righteous U.S. will try one more attempt to save Haiti from self-destruction!

In 1994, Clinton’s administration reaches into its imperialist box for a card trick. Where’s Aristide? Send him home - that’s an order! And Aristide is flown back to Haiti while Clinton makes himself the Savior to the Rescue, fulfilling the wishes of the Haitian poor and working class! That’s the story! Cameras prepare for the moment… But not before some business is sealed in the backroom.

The day before Washington stages the dramatic return of Aristide to “restore democracy,” in Haiti, Clinton “secretly” authorizes the “Texaco Oil Company to ship oil to the junta illegally, in violation of presidential directives,” writes Chomsky. Suppressed information to be sure, for it received, Chomsky writes, only “scant mention buried in the business press.”

But that’s not all!

In “Bill Clinton Named New UN Envoy to ‘Stabilize’ Haiti,” Jeremy Scahill refers to a Los Angeles Times report at the time that explained the challenges Haiti and the duly elected Aristide faced with its democratic and liberty for all Goliath neighbor to the north.

In a series of private meetings, Administration officials admonished Aristide to put aside the rhetoric of class warfare … and seek instead to reconcile Haiti’s rich and poor. The Administration also urged Aristide to stick closely to free-market economics and to abide by the Caribbean nation’s constitution - which gives substantial political power to the Parliament while imposing tight limits on the presidency. … Administration officials have urged Aristide to reach out to some of his political opponents in setting up his new government … to set up a broad-based coalition regime. … the Administration has made it clear to Aristide that if he fails to reach a consensus with Parliament, the United States will not try to prop up his regime. Almost every aspect of Aristide’s plans for resuming power - from taxing the rich to disarming the military - has been examined by the U.S. officials with whom the Haitian president meets daily and by officials from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other aid organizations. The finished package clearly reflects their priorities. …

A free and dully elected President of Haiti, Aristide, returns to Haiti in chains - thanks to Bill Clinton!

Aristide’s entourage consists of 20,000 U.S. “peacekeeping” troops intended to “assure IMF demands were observed,” writes Stephan Lendman in “Reviewing David Cromwell and David Edwards ‘Guardians of Power’”). Along with U.S. military, Aristide was given conditions that would ensure plans for Haiti’s economic sovereignty would be doomed because Aristide would be forced to fulfilling the demands of U.S. corporations and the free market rather than attend to the needs of the poor and working class.

The U.S. and International media effort to misdirect public attention from the ruling classes’ guerillas portrayed Aristide as a corrupter of democracy. In “Behind Aristide’s Fall: What Led to the Coup?” Helen Scott writes that Aristide was forced to close the school system. But U.S. and International media reports didn’t report that the schools were closed after they came under attack by arsonists. After Aristide “signed on to U.S. conditions for his return to power in 1994,” he had begun “managing the system, not fighting it.”

In the meantime, the immigrant policy changed with a President Aristide: Haitians escaping a violent, undemocratic regime were allowed to enter the U.S.

Clinton engaged Dark Side policies in Haiti.

Jeremy Scahill writes in “Bill Clinton Named New UN Envoy to ‘Stabilize’ Haiti,” Clinton’s policies helped systematically destabilize the country. “When Clinton came to power, he played a vicious game with Haiti that allowed the coup regime to continue rampaging Haiti.”

In 2009, when the people of Haiti are peacefully mourning a man who truly brought them hope, who sacrificed his life on behalf of the peoples’ interests, they are reminded of the UN’s “stabilizing mission” - with the U.S. not far behind.

As the people call for the return of Aristide, they are given Bill Clinton as a U.N. Special Representative!

By definition, an envoy is a “messenger,” an agent on a “special diplomatic mission,” sent to represent a governing body.

Now “the first Black President” of the U.S., Bill Clinton, will work closely with U.S. Ambassador Janet Sanderson to tame the unruly poor and working class for once and for all!

Bill Clinton did a number on Black Americans with the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, 1994, the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, 1996, and the Welfare Reform Bill, 1996. Now he’s set to finish off the people of Haiti and Lavalas with his corporate followers eager to “stabilize” Haiti as colony of the U.S. corporations. Send Aristide out the back down and drive the smiling Clinton to the front door!

Slow torture? “Clinton in Haiti as Special Envoy” is the U.S., the UN and the Western International interest practice of slow torture on a people struggling for freedom from the tyranny of corporate rule. No doubt, there will be photos of Clinton surrounded by little Haitian children. There’s Clinton with his hand on the shoulder of a poor Haitian woman. The photo will freeze a caring-looking Clinton. But he’ll have the interests of the ruling class and the U.S. corporations in his heart.

But the people know their history!

And the Haitian people know the interests of the U.S. and the U.N. has never been favorable to their interests.

The people have to remain alert and active, for the profit- and power-obsessed Pax Americana apparatus never sleeps.

On the watch of another democratic U.S. president - Barrack Obama - trained thugs on behalf of the ruling classes of Honduras and U.S. corporate interests has defied the Left and the will of the people. On Sunday, June 28, 2009, the Pentagon-funded and CIA-trained Army School of America (SOA) thugs notified the Obama administration days in advanced, Michael Parenti, progressive political analysts, reports, before waking the dully-elected President Manuel Zelaya from his sleep and flying him at gun point to Costa Rica.

Is the coup leadership the U.S.’s collection of special envois to the Honduras by way of the SOA?