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The
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This commentary
was originally published in Issue 81 of BC on
March 11, 2004 |
The
Bushites have the Madness Touch. Their very presence warps
conventional notions of reality.
Thus,
the new “prime minister” of Haiti appears as surprised as
the rest of his countrymen when conveyed the title by an “eminent”
rump of persons chosen by the occupying power. The man picked
for the job on Tuesday, business consultant
Gérard Latortue, doesn’t even arrive in Haiti from his
home in Boca Raton, Florida, until Wednesday. U.S. Marines
believe they have killed Haitian gunmen in battle, but seem
unconcerned as to their identities. Half a world away, the
constitutional head of state, elected with overwhelming popular
support in a process deemed free and fair by the entire international
community, is held captive by an African military dictator
after being kidnapped by the world’s superpower in cahoots
with the former colonial master of his country.
The
world searches for terminology to describe the high crimes
of the Bush regime in Haiti and the Central African Republic,
and of course, Iraq – even as endless additional criminal
contingencies take shape in the planning rooms of the Pentagon.
The Bushites seem determined to methodically teach the planet
that Washington is a threat to the very concept of international
order – that they are Pirates.
Evidence
that George Bush is leader of a rogue, pirate state accumulates
daily, for the world to examine in the raw. Yet the racist
cabal (and its Black operatives) seem not to understand that
Haiti’s President Jean-Bertrand Aristide cannot be demonized
like Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. The nightmare image is seared
into the global retina: the frail ex-priest and his wife,
kidnapped from their home and delivered to the tender mercies
of coup-making African generals.
If
the Bushites are on an international consciousness raising
mission, they are succeeding. Whatever perverse logic guides
their actions – and we have seen such logic at work in the
world, before, when small groups of men tested their “will”
against the survival instincts of the planet – they are in
fact summoning a future “tribunal” whose mandate must expand
to match the crimes of the American perpetrators. There will
be a response to this avalanche of atrocities that “are so
harmful to international interests that states are entitled
– and even obliged – to bring proceedings against the perpetrator,
regardless of the location of the crime or the nationality
of the perpetrator or victim," to borrow the words of
Mary Robinson, former United Nations high commissioner
for human rights.
Crime
in full view
The
Bushites repeatedly overreach in their quest for world hegemony,
perceiving that the domestic price for dealing death and humiliation
to darker peoples is cheap. A poll shows that only one-third
of Floridians are opposed to U.S. actions in Haiti. The terrifying
odyssey to which Mildred Aristide – a Black First Lady and
American citizen! – has been subjected does not resonate in
a society that, nonetheless, agonizes over the prospect of
Martha Stewart doing a short stretch in prison. Yet outside
the white American bubble, the Aristides’ ordeal is seen as
the toying of a mouse by a cat: brutish, cruel and – because
Bush is not a cat, but a man – evil. Black America is reminded
of the nature of the all too familiar beast.
“If
you tell Charlie Rangel that my wife and children are gonna
die unless I go with you, that is a kidnapping,” said the
Harlem Congressman at a taping of the local television program,
Like It Is. Rangel framed the issue as a no-brainer
at congressional hearings on the Haiti coup:
“The
Black's Law Dictionary, 4th Edition, says that ‘at common
law, kidnapping is the forcible abduction or stealing and
carrying away of a person from his own country to another.’
On Saturday night/Sunday morning the United States Government
engineered the forcible removal of the lawfully elected President
of Haiti from his own country and arranged that he be carried
away to another.”
When
the victim is a head of state, and his country is the booty,
the crime is piracy on a superpower scale.
Piracy
is not strictly a crime of maritime or aviation hijacking.
International law began as a collective response to piracy.
Legal scholar Louis Sohn wrote that “the first breakthrough”
in punishing international crime “occurred when international
law accepted the concepts that pirates are “enemies of mankind”
and that piracy is “an offense against the law of nations.”
Mexican General Santa Anna routinely referred to the slave-holding
Texans as “land
pirates.” The Bush regime flouts “the law of nations”
as a matter of policy – an all but self-proclaimed pirate
state.
Betrayed
and utterly disrespected, the Caribbean community of nations
refused to take part in the U.S.-led occupation of Haiti.
Caricom is “extremely disappointed'' at the involvement of
“Western partners'' in the removal of Aristide, said Jamaican
Prime Minister P.J. Patterson. Having invaded Grenada in the
lesser Antilles in 1983, the U.S. now shows an appetite for
the greater Antilles, as well. The Pirates have returned
to Caribbean waters with a vengeance. “The situation calls
for an investigation of what transpired and we believe that
it should be done under the auspices of some independent body
such as the United Nations,'' said Patterson, speaking for
14 Caricom countries. (Haiti is also a member.)
Pirates
are no respecters of national sovereignty, by definition.
“I imagine that [Caribbean heads of state] are very much aware
that if it can happen to Aristide, it can also happen to them
or any other small country,” said veteran Jamaican journalist
and educator
John Maxwell. This is doubtless the message that Secretary
of State Colin Powell and his boss intended to transmit –
a threat to once again violate “the law of nations.”
The
53-nation African Union, whose member states are regularly
hectored by France, Britain and the United States to respect
the rule of law, this week joined Caricom in calling for a
UN investigation of Aristide’s ouster, which “set a dangerous
precedent for duly elected persons.”
“The
African Union has decided to undertake immediate consultation
with both CARICOM and eventually the United Nations in order
to discuss the conditions for a quick return to constitutional
democracy” in Haiti, said the AU.
A
matching set of conspirators
Buoyed
by the continental support, Aristide’s lawyers began preparing
a broad legal counter-assault, based on the assumption that,
although the Bush Administration rejects the rule of law,
most the rest of the world does not. In recognition of the
American-French imperial partnership, Aristide teams drew
up a list of defendants in both countries. According to Australia’s
Herald Sun newspaper, chief Aristide lawyer Ira Kurzban charges
“Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin
Powell, Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega and Luis
Moreno, the deputy chief of mission of the US Embassy, were
behind Aristide's February 29 removal and forced him and his
wife into exile in the Central African Republic.”
In
Paris, Aristide counsel Gilbert Collard charged four luminaries with “complicity in
abduction'': Thierry Burkard, France's ambassador to Haiti;
Yves Gaudel, the former ambassador; envoy Regis Debray; and
Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin's sister, Veronique.
She and Debray visited Aristide in December to demand his
resignation, said attorney Collard, indicating the French
end of the conspiracy was in full swing prior to Haiti’s bicentennial
celebrations.
To
cover all the legal bases, Ira Kurzban also sent U.S. Attorney
General John Ashcroft a formal request for an investigation
of the Presidential couple’s abduction, noting that Mildred
Aristide is a U.S. citizen.
Captors
claim to speak for Aristide
The
rush of activity came on the heals of bizarre events in Bangui
on Sunday and Monday, as the Central African Republic’s military
government attempted to simultaneously act as French client,
prison warden, and gracious host – an impossible task for
a gaggle of coupsters.
Reporters
were told to expect a Sunday press conference featuring President
and Mrs. Aristide. Instead, heavily armed soldiers burst into
the conference room demanding the cameras and recorders be
turned off. Then Mrs. Aristide was brought in and made to
sit in a corner in silence, looking “very distressed,” according
to a CNN reporter on the scene. President Aristide never appeared.
“A Government spokesman read a statement, supposedly from
President Aristide, in which he thanked the CAR for their
kindness. Mme. Aristide was then taken away," said
the CNN guy, who filed only one report describing the
madness before his network sanitized the whole affair.
On
Monday morning President Aristide was allowed to hold a press
conference at the Central African Republic’s Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, in which he gave details of the “political kidnapping”
by the United States and declared, “I am the democratically
elected president and I remain so. I plead for the restoration
of democracy'' in Haiti.
“Aristide
spoke with reporters despite a pointed, public request by
Foreign Minister Charles Wenezoui that he avoid talking about
Haitian politics or unidentified “friendly countries,” the
Associated Press reported. “Aristide
said he had been ‘well looked after’ by his Central African
hosts, backtracking on his lawyers' statements that he was
‘a prisoner’ in Bangui.”
But
a prisoner he clearly was. In a 30-minute interview with
Pacifica’s Democracy Now! program, Aristide said the U.S.
“preferred the Haitian people to move from coup d'etat,
to coup d'etat.” Nevertheless, “I pay tribute to the government
of Central Africa for the way they welcomed us. It was gracious,
human, good, and until now, this is the kind of relationship
which we are developing together. I thank them for that once
again.” Then he was told to get off the phone. “Now, time
is gone. Unfortunately I need to stop because they just asked
me to leave.”
The
real news emerged after Aristide met with a delegation of
supporters that had been turned away the day before. The group
included representatives of former Attorney General Ramsey
Clark’s International Action Center, the Haiti Support Network,
Aristide lawyer Brian Concannon, and Kim Ives, a Creole-speaker
with the publication Haiti-Progress. Ives offered this extraordinary
account of the March 8 conversation:
"In
the course of the discussions with President Aristide, it
became clear that the timing of the coup coincided with several
international developments that could have shifted the relationship
of forces in the Haitian government's favor. While the U.S.
government escalated pressure on Aristide to resign in that
last week, the government of South Africa had sent a planeload
of weapons that was set to arrive on Sunday, February 29.
Venezuela was in discussions about sending troops to support
Aristide. There was also gathering international support and
solidarity for the maintenance of constitutional democracy
in Haiti. African American leaders were receiving increasing
media attention as they denounced the efforts towards a coup.
Two prominent U.S. delegations, one led by members of the
Congressional Black Caucus and another led by former U.S.
Attorney General Ramsey Clark, were set to arrive within
days. We can see that there were various converging influences
of aid about to come. This accounts in large part for the
timing of the coup, it explains why the U.S. had to rush in
and remove Aristide."
So,
did the Bushites lie so badly in the aftermath of the coup
because they were forced to plot in haste? Or is it that they
don’t really give a damn about public opinion? New York Rep.
Charles Rangel tends to think the latter: “Regardless of the
question their response will be, ‘What difference does it
make? We got rid of Aristide.’”
The traveling President of Haiti
The
confusion regarding South Africa’s willingness to grant asylum
to Aristide stems from disinformation straight from the lips
of Colin Powell – the best liar in the administration, given
the material he has to work with. In the days after the abduction,
Powell and his subordinates attempted to depict South Africa
as reluctant to accept Aristide, as if he were an international
albatross. The Haitian President, of course, had had no intention
of leaving Haiti and, therefore, never thought to ask any
nation for asylum before being bundled away to Bangui.
Danny Schecter, the respected News Dissector of the web site
of the same name, reported that it was Colin Powell who tried
to book Aristide to South Africa.
ANC
leader Pallo Jordan, chairman of the Parliament's Foreign
Affairs Committee sent me an article he's written which
offers some information not published in the US. Here are
some excerpts:
"While
the plane was on the tarmac, Colin Powell made a number
of phone-calls, one to President Mbeki, requesting asylum
for Aristide. No one in the South African government leaked
the information about that request to the media….
"It
is equally clear that the pleas of Caricom notwithstanding,
Washington chose to assist the rebels to get rid of Aristide,
first by inaction, then by shipping him out of the country.
Secretary of State Powell will forgive us for regarding
his assurances to the contrary with profound skepticism.
It's a mere twelve months ago that he was giving us equally
impassioned assurances of US good intentions. Today we
all know that he either misled us or told us deliberate
lies.”
On
Wednesday, March 9, the African Union as a body embraced Aristide.
The Associated Press filed this curious report, which we will
explicate, momentarily:
The
organization representing 53 African nations should arrange
the long-term asylum plans of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a
South African official said Wednesday after meeting with
the exiled former Haitian leader.
South
Africa Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Aziz Pahad told The
Associated Press that the African Union should arrange asylum
plans for Aristide, who arrived in the Central African Republic
on March 1. He flew from Haiti the day before on a U.S.-provided
jet.
“He's
already here and the question of whether he is going to
another African country, it's an African Union decision,''
Pahad said without elaborating….
The
AU said it would accept Aristide receiving asylum in Africa,
but it did not say in which nation he might ultimately settle.
Central African Republic officials have said Aristide may
stay in this country, if he asks.
In
addition to the ridiculous reference to the “U.S.-provided
jet” – as if the Americans had arranged an aerial chauffer
service for Aristide! – the AP reports that “South Africa
was the country most often mentioned as his destination, a
U.S. official said.” In fact, Powell and the other Bushites
were the only people claiming, falsely, that Aristide
had been seeking refuge in South Africa.
There
is nothing strange going on whatsoever between Aristide and
his close allies in the South African government. It is the
U.S. that wants to “park” Aristide somewhere, to create the
impression of a permanent fait accompli in Haiti. Aristide
has purposely made his plans vague because he insists that
he is still President of his country, and in all likelihood
he will avoid the appearance of having come to rest by traveling
the globe in pursuit of a just outcome. Every junior diplomat
understands the way this game is played – certainly, Colin
Powell does, which is why he worked the phones so hard attempting
to arrange a permanent-looking exile for Aristide. And this
is why South Africa speaks very carefully on the subject,
understanding that the Americans are waiting to exploit any
slip in language.
The
African National Congress government of South Africa has no
reason to fear domestic fallout from association with Aristide,
who is at present Black Enemy Number One of the racist superpower.
That’s a badge of honor among the ANC’s base. Only Americans
believe American nonsense.
Truth
Act
Black
Congresspersons Barbara Lee (D-CA) and John Conyers (D-MI)
on Monday introduced the TRUTH Act, an acronym for The
Responsibility to Uncover the Truth about Haiti. “The Bush
administration's efforts in the overthrow of a democratically
elected government must be investigated,” said Lee. “All of
the evidence brought forward thus far suggests that the administration
has, in essence, carried out a form of regime change, a different
variation than it took in Iraq, but still regime change.”
The bill calls for a bipartisan (five each from both parties)
TRUTH Commission modeled on California Rep. Henry Waxman’s
Weapons of Mass Destruction panel. “The American people and
the international community deserve to know the truth,” Rep.
Lee explained, “and this bill will offer the opportunity to
investigate the long-term origins of the overthrow of the
Haitian government and the impact of our failure to protect
democracy." Lee and Conyers want to know:
- Did
the U.S. Government impede democracy and contribute to the
overthrow of the Aristide government?
- Under what circumstances did President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide resign, and what was the role of the United States
Government in bringing about his departure?
- To what extent did the U.S. impede efforts by the
international community, particularly the Caribbean Community
(CARICOM) countries, to prevent the overthrow of the democratically-elected
Government of Haiti?
- What was the role of the United States in influencing
decisions regarding Haiti at the United Nations Security
Council and in discussions between Haiti and other countries
that were willing to assist in the preservation of the democratically-elected
Government of Haiti by sending security forces to Haiti?
- Was U.S. assistance provided or were U.S. personnel
involved in supporting, directly or indirectly, the forces
opposed to the government of President Aristide?
- Was U.S. bilateral assistance channeled through
nongovernmental organizations that were directly or indirectly
associated with political groups actively involved in fomenting
hostilities or violence toward the government of President
Aristide?
The
TRUTH Act is supported by 23 other members of Congress. It
closely resembles a seven-point line of questioning compiled
by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark (see “The Coup
Must Not Stand,” English translation, Hait-Progres, March
3). The similarities are not surprising, since the broad outlines
of the crime are visible to the entire world. “The U.S. Congress
must investigate,” said Clark, “if the Bush administration
policy of unilateral wars of aggression, violations of international
law and the U.S. Constitution and regime change is to be stopped
before the U.S. loses its last friend and creates a wave of
terrorism that will engulf the planet for years.”
Jesse
Jackson saw the same “U.S.-engineered coup against Aristide”
observed by everyone else on Earth – with the exception of
those hopelessly damaged by cognition-crippling racism. Most
of the facts are clear and agreed upon by “both sides,” said
the civil rights leader. “Nothing more is needed to establish
that the Bush administration was directly implicated in a
coup of the elected government of Haiti. The only disagreement
is in the details:
”Was
the CIA, which had long ties to the leaders of the rebels,
aware of the planned rebellion before it was launched? Did
it assist or 'nod' ' to the rebels when asked? Did it know
of the flow of arms to the rebels? If it knew, did it
do anything to intercept or impede that flow, or to warn
the Haitian government or the regional allies?
“It is vital that Congress hold hearings on what the CIA and
the State Department and the Defense Department knew
and how they acted on that knowledge.
”But even without any further evidence, there is sufficient
agreement on the facts to establish that this administration
aided and abetted the coup against Aristide. And now
it is working to put back in power the very Haitian elites
that its ideologues had supported from the beginning.”
Kerry
and Kucinich views
Senator
John Kerry is making some of the right noises on the Haiti
issue, and calls for investigations into Aristide’s overthrow.
According to last Sunday’s (maliciously biased)
New York Times:
Had
he been sitting in the Oval Office last weekend as rebel
forces were threatening to enter Port-au-Prince, Senator
John Kerry says, he would have sent an international force
to protect Haiti's widely disliked elected leader [!], Jean-Bertrand
Aristide.
"I
would have been prepared to send troops immediately, period,"
Mr. Kerry said on Friday, expressing astonishment that President
Bush, who talks of supporting democratically elected leaders,
withheld any aid and then helped spirit Mr. Aristide into
exile after saying the United States could not protect him.
"Look,
Aristide was no picnic, and did a lot of things wrong,"
Mr. Kerry said. But Washington "had understandings
in the region about the right of a democratic regime to
ask for help. And we contravened all of that. I think it's
a terrible message to the region, democracies, and it's
shortsighted."
Kerry
knows all about the Bush regime’s Latin America and Caribbean
team. A number of the current coup-makers were deeply involved
in Reagan- and Bush Sr.-era arming of Nicaraguan contras,
fattening military dictators and protecting cocaine dealing
by both, back when Kerry chaired the Senate Committee on Drugs,
Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy, in the Eighties. For a
time it seemed as if the Kerry Commission might vigorously
pursue the CIA-crack cocaine scandal, but he eventually lost
interest.
Dennis
Kucinich, as we have come to expect, runs a much better line
on Haiti, but he will not become president. Kucinich also
calls for an investigation into Aristide’s removal.
”But
that investigation should not be left in the hands of the
Bush Administration. I don't trust the Bush Administration,
and I don't think you do either. That investigation must
be undertaken by the United Nations, the OAS, and the Caribbean
community. And I would further suggest that that investigation
extend to the roles that the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund played in creating the framework for failure….
“We
must all be mindful and very, very aware of the attempts that
will be made – as they were in Iraq – to install the Haliburtons
and the Bechtels as the "rebuilders" of Haiti. There
may not be oil, but there will be cash. And whenever there
is, you know who will be the first ones to cash in. If the
United States is in control, that means George Bush is in
control. And we’ve seen over and over again what that means.”
The
truth is that whether George Bush or John Kerry is “in control,”
American foreign policy structures are designed to undermine
popular movements and governments at every point of contact.
George Bush did not create the Haitian (or Venezuelan, or
Argentinian, or Bolivian) miseries – he simply added a more
demonic layer of horror. These U.S. foreign policy “structures
of subversion” are institutionally connected to the Democratic
Party and organized labor, and must be dismantled, root and
branch.
Trojan
Horse endowment
The
National Endowment for the Democracy is a slick, 1983 Reagan
administration invention, a “reform” purportedly designed
to make U.S. foreign policy more transparent in the wake of
Seventies revelations of massive CIA subversion of foreign
governments and political movements. As William Blum put it
in his 2000 book, “Rogue
State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower,” “the idea
was that the NED would do somewhat overtly what the CIA had
been doing covertly for decades, and thus, hopefully, eliminate
the stigma associated with CIA covert activities…. It was
a masterpiece. Of politics, of public relations and of cynicism.”
“Trojan
Horse” is an apt description of the NED which, rather than
curtail CIA activities, created (yet another) institutional
link between the political subversion arm of the U.S. government
and the Republican and Democratic parties, the U.S. Chamber
of Commerce-affiliated Center for International Private Enterprise,
and the AFL-CIO, which divide among themselves most of the
NED’s budget. Although $35 million is an unimpressive portion
of the federal budget (George Bush proposes to double the
amount this year), the NED has proven a highly effective mechanism
for hands-on American manipulation of the politics of targeted
nations. In Venezuela and Haiti, it has empowered and emboldened
murderous, fascist-minded elites. Blum explains how it works:
In
a multitude of ways, NED meddles in the internal affairs of
foreign countries by supplying funds, technical know-how,
training, educational materials, computers, faxes, copiers,
automobiles, and so on, to selected political groups, civic
organizations, labor unions, dissident movements, student
groups, book publishers, newspapers, other media, etc.
NED programs generally impart the basic philosophy that working
people and other citizens are best served under a system of
free enterprise, class cooperation, collective bargaining,
minimal government intervention in the economy, and opposition
to socialism in any shape or form. A free-market economy
is equated with democracy, reform, and growth; and the merits
of foreign investment are emphasized.
The
NED took American intervention in the domestic affairs of
foreign nations out of the shadows and made it respectable
– a brilliant political coup. Most sinisterly, the Trojan
Horse NED subverts the AFL-CIO and the Democratic Party, acting
as a “point of contact” between these institutions and covert
U.S. operatives (although unionists and Democrats will deny
this, and some may actually be oblivious to the company they
keep) and with corporate agents bent on further exploitation
of foreign lands. In Haiti and Venezuela, this American public-private-labor
project became inseparable from coup-making.
As
relentlessly coercive, bipartisan (Clinton Democrats – Bush
Republicans) U.S. “free trade” policies strangle the internal
economies of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, the
NED buttresses or, if need be, invents local political groupings
that facilitate the American corporate assault on national
institutions and sovereignty – a true Trojan Horse.
In
the case of Haiti, the International Republican Institute
component of the NED, under the slogan “party building,” almost
single-handedly constructed the “civil society” political
“opposition” that now advises the U.S. occupiers in Port-au-Prince
(and nurtured the armed elements in their Dominican Republic
sanctuaries, as well). But it was Bill Clinton who put Jean
Bertrand Aristide in a structural straightjacket on his return
from exile in 1994, as Noam Chomsky explains in this week’s
Zmag, by forcing the leader of the poor to “adopt the program
of the defeated US candidate in the 1990 elections, a former
World Bank official who had received 14% of the vote.
As
democracy was thereby restored, the World Bank announced that
"The renovated state must focus on an economic strategy
centered on the energy and initiative of Civil Society, especially
the private sector, both national and foreign." That
has the merit of honesty: Haitian Civil Society includes the
tiny rich elite and US corporations, but not the vast majority
of the population, the peasants and slum-dwellers who had
committed the grave sin of organizing to elect their own president.
World Bank officers explained that the neoliberal program
would benefit the "more open, enlightened, business class"
and foreign investors, but assured us that the program "is
not going to hurt the poor to the extent it has in other countries"
subjected to structural adjustment, because the Haitian poor
already lacked minimal protection from proper economic policy,
such as subsidies for basic goods.
It
is clear that the Clinton Administration/World Bank/International
Republican Institute position was that the poor – the vast
bulk of the population – were so profoundly marginalized economically
as to count for nothing. Aristide represented, from this point
of view, no one. “Civil society” became a euphemism for the
tiny elite – a number of them fantastically wealthy – who
despite their riches were pampered, coddled and guided through
the NED-financed “party building” enterprise, better described
as a nation-destroying project. Haiti is a ruin.
During
recent years the AFL-CIO wing of the NED public-private-labor
partnership in Haiti appears essentially inactive. The only
project posted on its Solidarity Center site is publication
of a report that “describes
and analyzes the shameful state of worker rights in Haiti.”
This is probably for the best, given the AFL-CIO’s record
in Venezuela, where NED money funded a labor alliance with
filthy rich fascists bent on establishing a rightwing dictatorship.
In
his March 2 Znet article, “What
Is the AFL-CIO doing in Venezuela?” Alberto Ruiz points
to continued AFL-CIO funding of the Confederation of Venezuelan
Workers (CTV), whose leadership sided with the oligarchy in
the 2002 attempted coup against President Hugo Chavez. “The
embarrassment suffered by the AFL-CIO over its pre-coup assistance
to the CTV has not deterred it from continuing to aid the
CTV subsequent to the coup. In response to a FOIA request
by the Venezuela Solidarity Committee, documents have surfaced
which demonstrate the AFL-CIO has continued to support the
CTV up through the year 2003 – again with NED monies.”
The
NED was poison when first concocted in 1983. It is a morally
and politically corrupting abomination that subverts not only
foreign governments and movements, but also the AFL-CIO, the
Democratic Party, and the American body politic.
Point
number six of Congresspersons Lee and Conyers TRUTH Act asks
the question: “Was U.S. bilateral assistance channeled
through nongovernmental organizations that were directly or
indirectly associated with political groups actively involved
in fomenting hostilities or violence toward the government
of President Aristide?”
The
answer is: Yes, funds from the National Endowment for Democracy
financed hostility and violence against Aristide’s government,
and are funding coup-plotters in Venezuela.
We
cannot even begin to make Haiti or anywhere else in the world
safe for human development if we fail to confront U.S. government
structures that subvert national independence. The National
Endowment for Democracy sucks American civil society
into its vortex of global subversion. It must be dismantled,
root and branch.
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