Join Lavalas: “No ‘Death Plan’! Return Aristide!”

“Today, the moment has come to fulfill that promise so that Aristide can return to participate in reconstruction” (Long memory Productions).

The leaders of Lavalas ask: “if Obama can do it, then why can’t Preval?” That is, why can’t Preval stand side by side with Aristide – in Haiti if the U.S. president is able to call on the bipartisan assistance of Clinton and Bush?

While I suspect that this display of bipartisanship represents a re-grouping of three U.S. presidents on behalf of U.S. interests in Haiti, I also think this press conference was staged to call Preval out, to reveal his complicity with the U.S. and Western powers. Demonstrations followed the press conference. People denounced Preval and called for Aristide.

Thirty U.S. Marines appeared at the press conference, however. The soldiers ended up standing around not sure what to do, according to Pina. But I can picture these Marines, ready to defend U.S. interests – in Haiti, among the rubble, dead, dying, starving and those with strength enough to organize to shelter and to feed others. “They’re here as a deterrent,” Pina said on Flashpoints. “They have orders to shoot to kill.”

We have heard these words before, here in cities throughout the U.S., wherever people rose up to denounce war and anti-imperialism and racism.

“Amid this catastrophe, imperial powers and corporate vultures are circling, eyeing the profits to be made from reconstruction,” writes Smith. Here’s where you’d think the Left activists and anti-imperialists fighters in the U.S. would step up and stand with the Haitian people. But no.

Instead, the “corporate vultures” have given the microphone to those aligned with the agenda of American Empire.

Ashley Smith’s article documents these voices speaking on behalf of imperialism. In The Street (an investment website) appears an article titled, “An Opportunity to Heal Haiti” in which the author, Scott Rothbort, cheers the corporations who will benefit from the reconstruction efforts in Haiti. Three cheers for “General Electric, Caterpillar, Deere, Fluor, Jacobs Engineering” and others, including Johnson & Johnson and Emerson Electric who will reconstruct the neoliberal plan in that “economically backward country—subject to a high degree of corruption and a history of dictatorial leaders” (“An Opportunity to Heal Haiti”).

Yippee for U.S. capitalism!

James Dobbins, Smith continues, a former U.S. special envoy to Haiti under Bill Clinton, sees Haiti remade “along free market lines” while Nicholas Kristoff, New York Times columnist, seems to proposes a softer, gentler coup for Haiti. Yes, it’s humanitarian:

Garment factories! Leave it to Kristoff to think about the little people of Haiti and, in the process, try and appear less offensive than General Electric or Caterpillar! A good liberal!

This arraignment of people serving as garment workers benefits the same people who benefited from their enslavement and the enslavement of all Africans in the Americas and the genocide of the indigenous Indian population. Garment factories! How’s that working for the majority people of the world right now? As Smith points out, Hillary Clinton “convinced Préval to declare emergency powers, which have been largely delegated to the U.S.” So excited by the opportunity to finally cash in and grab Haiti, once and for all, Clinton (like her husband) is shouting for all to hear: “We have a plan. It was a legitimate plan, it was done in conjunction with other international donors, with the United Nations.” (Donors? Bill Clinton’s donors!).

The author of the plan is Oxford University professor Paul Collier. Collier wrote The Bottom Billion, a book widely read in development circles. In it, he advocates a neocolonial strategy for crisis-torn societies. He argues that to be effective, great powers and international bodies like the UN must intervene militarily and occupy failed states. After setting up shop, they then can impose development plans to reconstruct their economies.

A “useful idiot for imperialism” (“Jean Bricmont’s apt phrase”) Smith declares that Collier provides “intellectual justification for conquest and exploitation.”

Collier sees a way to make Haiti a comfortable homeland. With its poverty and “relatively unregulated labor market,” Collier claims, Haiti’s labor could compete with China. “Haitian labor is not only cheap, it is of good quality. Indeed, because the garments industry used to be much larger than it is currently, there is a substantial pool of experienced labor” (Smith).

Collier is also a friend of Bill. Together, the two, Smith adds, call for – surprise, surprise – investment in the tourist industry, re-development of the sweatshop industry in cities, export-oriented mango plantations in the countryside and construction of infrastructure to service this development. Each of these projects serves the interests of multinational corporations and the Haitian elite at the expense of the workers and peasants.

The new homeland of Haiti will look like every other land, including the U.S., where capitalism runs amok, creating more homeless and working poor and U.S. government bailouts and multimillion dollar bonuses for the corporate CEOs.

As Ezili Danto writes, “The US must STOP blocking Haitian relief: 80% of Haiti’s population lives OUTSIDE of Port au Prince: Haiti is not the Republic of Port au Prince where the internationals congregate,” the Haitians have a plan, too.

The Haitians have a plan for their homeland. Danto asks:

But a day after Lavalas holds a press conference and the people demonstrate calling for Aristide, Bill Clinton arrives in Haiti.

He’s feeling a little more comfortable now as he declares to the cameras: he will get to the bottom of this “bottleneck” and solve the problem! Who doesn’t believe that “bottleneck” is the cure to eliminating Haitians not immediately killed by the earthquake?

Want to solve that “bottleneck,” Clinton, play back that Lavalas press conference! Leave the Haitians alone!

The Left must take a political stand with Lavalas and the people of Haiti against imperialism and its virile brand of racism before the cameras leave and the U.S. troops receive their orders to commence enforcing homeland security tactics in Haiti. By then, reports from Haiti will tell of the violence of “antagonists” and killings, necessary and just, killings of Lavalas leaders and supporters by the “protagonists” who were just trying to help these poor people. Don’t wait until that narrative plants you in front of your televisions to listen to the corporate PR, courtesy of the American Empire.

Aristide! Aristide! Aristide!

See:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWqgOe0-0xA

Haiti and The “Devil’s Curse” – The Truth About Haiti & Lies Of The Media PART 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9Qki6TrI7M&feature=related

PART 2

Contact:

Hayti.net – Site Officel de Organization Politique Fanmi Lavalas

Haitiaction.net – Haiti Action Committee

Haitisolidarity.net – Haiti Solidarity Action Committee

Lakounewyork.com – Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees

[1] Kevin Pina reports that Preval has supplied his mayors with food aid. The mayors, in turn, have put the food up for sale (Flashpoints).