Kevin Pina on the US backed coup in haiti : Melbourne Indymedia

In Haiti, as in Venezuela, corporate media act as public relations agents for a political opposition nurtured by the U.S. government. Truth is shamelessly obscured by relentless quotes from opposition figures pursuing American goals of “regime change,” a euphemism for the overthrow of popularly elected governments.

With scant resources but plenty of courage, Associate Editor Kevin Pina exposes himself daily to the dangers of telling the truth about a nation under siege by a superpower. Pina has lost friends to opposition violence (and gained a newborn baby boy) during his most recent reporting from Haiti. Meanwhile, the corporate press hobnob with U.S. embassy officials and fraternize with the Haitian elite, among the most corrupt in the hemisphere.

Below are two links that demonstrate the hopeless bias of corporate shills who pretend to be reporters for Reuters and the Associated Press. The Reuters report is blatant propaganda for the opposition, who are made to seem victims, while the AP dispatch mentions 21 killings since mid-September, but gives the impression that pro-Aristide forces are committing most of the violence.

Reuters, December 12

Associated Press, December 14

Yet, as ’s Kevin Pina reports, the ongoing violence is in fact a deliberate provocation by the U.S. backed opposition, bent on creating a climate of anarchy to justify outside military intervention.

Following Pina’s article are reports from a Haitian government press spokesperson and the Haitian Press Agency (AHP) – The Publishers

rest of report here:
http://blackcommentator.com/69/69_haiti.html

by kevin Pina

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Money is power and power is money. The Bush administration buys and sells political constituencies every day in pursuit of world domination. Haiti, which recently celebrated its bicentennial as the world's first black republic, is not otherworldly or immune from purchase. Softening the ground for the transaction is the corporate media that blatantly acquiesce to the U.S. State Department's campaign to denigrate the rights and humanity of Haiti’s poor black majority. There is no other way to describe their current campaign to portray the opposition in Haiti as the new "freedom fighters" of the hemisphere, out to topple the repressive “dictatorship” of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

George Bush's earlier attempt to destroy the popular government of the poor in Venezuela only expanded his learning curve in Haiti. The conclusions to both these stories are not yet written.

The Washington-forged opposition grows lighter in color and more brazen with each passing day, while former Haitian military leaders prance hand in hand with Haiti's traditional economic elite, intellectuals and artists. The poor black majority, who cannot read or write and continue to support the constitutional government of President Aristide, has been deliberately made indescribably poorer in an effort to force them to turn against their own interests.

Going to bed hungry is not uncommon in Haiti. The greatest violence here is the violence of hunger and poverty. It permeates and consumes everything in its path. Haiti's phantom "middle class" – the relative few who have something such as an education to cling to – can be easily manipulated against a government that has declared itself to be working on behalf of those who have nothing save for the conviction that tomorrow may yield a better future for their children. This is especially true when the media inside and outside of Haiti do everything possible to make it so.

Disinformation media

The Haitian press, most notably Radio Metropole, Radio Vision 2000, Radio Kiskeya, Radio Caraibe and Tele-Haiti, have shown themselves to be wanton whores in the campaign to sow confusion and panic among the people. They are active players in the U.S. campaign to destabilize Haiti's constitutional government. With total disregard for principles of "objective journalism," they circulate exaggerated reports of violence by Lavalas, turn a blind eye to violence on the part of the opposition, and underreport the size and frequency of Lavalas demonstrations demanding President Aristide fulfill his five-year term in office. They regularly produce and air commercials calling upon the population to "claim their democratic rights" by joining anti-Aristide street actions. Just as in Venezuela, where local elites use their media to spearhead the opposition to President Hugo Chavez, the clear objective in Haiti is to throw the constitution in the trash and force President Aristide to resign.

Never mind that Radio Vision 2000 is owned by the same right-wing Boulos family that funds the Haiti Democracy Project in Washington D.C. Never mind that Tele-Haiti was founded by Andre Apaid, the self-proclaimed leader of Group 184 that was "created from whole cloth" by the Haiti Democracy Project. (See “The Bush Administration’s End Game for Haiti,” December 4.) Never mind that two prominent journalists of Radio Metropole were funded by the U.S. State Department to tour the United States in mid-January of this year to meet with editorial boards around the country to spread their message of the evils of Aristide's "dictatorship." Ignore the fact that they are a major source of information for the Associated Press, Reuters and France's venerable RFI whose reporters can be seen openly sharing "information" with them buddy-buddy style on any given day. Here’s the way it works: Metropole reports a fabrication; AP and RFI pick it up for their wire services, then Kiskeya and the others report it again in Haiti backed by the credibility of the international press. The positive feedback loop of disinformation for the opposition is now complete.

Partners in crime

On December 3rd the rumor hit the streets of Port-au-Prince that President Aristide would be forced to resign on December 5th. Not so coincidentally, the justification for the latest round of protests against the Haitian government can be traced to December 5th and what Apaid and his minions refer to as "Black Friday." This date was previously etched in the Haitian popular memory as a day of memorial for the victims of a bomb that exploded during Aristide's first campaign for the presidency in 1990 in Petion-Ville. Instead, it has now been displaced with an alleged attack against university students by Lavalas.

”Alleged” is indeed the case. A videotape has been discovered of events at the university that day which appears to refute the description given by Radio Metropole and Tele-Haiti. Both outlets reported that popular organizations aligned with Lavalas broke through a back wall of the university, destroyed computers at the site and then proceeded to break the legs of the university's Rector after he entered the facility. However, the videotape clearly shows that Lavalas militants were outside of the building when these transgressions occurred and that the so-called "students" were in complete control of the facility when the Rector entered. Although they claim that Lavalas militants had burned a hole through a back wall, the opposition "students" can be seen pummeling the police and the press with large rocks and small boulders as they attempt to approach the building. As the Rector proceeds to enter with a police escort, the "students" can be heard chanting "no police" several times from behind the large metal gate, at which time the Rector is heard asking the police to let him enter unescorted. This does not sound like a compound under siege from within, but rather a site under the complete control of those inside. As you hear the crashing sounds of computers in the facility being broken, Lavalas popular organizations members comment on the tape, "Oh my god. They are going to blame us or the police after this is over." Photos have been taken of the "students" who controlled the facility from their rock throwing perch on the balcony, and some sources have said that arrests for questioning are imminent.

The tape irrefutably shows that the only camera crew allowed to enter the facility was Tele-Haiti, while the rock-throwing students kept the other media outside. In that case, how could it be that Lavalas militants were inside and in control of the university facility? One university student who left the campus bloodied may hold the key. "We were attacked by student members of the opposition for being pro-Aristide,” he stated. “After they broke the computers they realized they had gone too far and held a quick meeting. They had cell phones and talked with someone on the outside. Then they brought into the room the faculty member responsible for the computers and he talked for several minutes with someone on the cell phone. I could not tell who it was but he agreed with them."

The Haitian police appear to have been equally confused. The tape allows us to easily identify the faces of the rock throwing "students" casually standing on a balcony above while the police arrest a mere two persons alleged to be Lavalas militants below. Were two persons responsible for the entire damage done to facility? As I watched the tape I could sense that the “facts” had been rehearsed. The “students” shamelessly forced tears as they left the facility blaming the evil Lavalas grassroots organizations for attacking them. To this day the Rector of the university has refused to comment on the incident.

Out of the shadows

Following the claims of "Black Friday" came a torrent of protests against the government from “students” supposedly violated by Lavalas. But Andre Apaid's Group 184 clearly emerged as the true leadership of the demonstrations. December 22 saw a large protest by Apaid’s group calling for the resignation of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. These surrogates of Washington's war against the poor in the Caribbean and Latin America, filled the streets with nearly 10,000 people while a smaller contingent of Aristide's Lavalas movement guarded the national palace. Michael Norton of the Associated Press, as well as a heavy contingent of France's press, witnessed this to conclude that it was merely a matter of time before Aristide and his ugly little experiment in democracy for the poor would fail. What they did not know, or could not know, was the depth of the creative resistance of the poor black majority in Haiti. It’s difficult to fault the foreign media’s judgment, however, for money is power and power is money and they can afford their next meal while the impoverished majority in Haiti cannot. In a country as poor as Haiti, this is the difference between knowing what is real and what is false. What non-Haitians must try to understand is that if only half of the negative propaganda about Lavalas were true, particularly that President Aristide no longer enjoys wide support in the country, this government would have fallen long ago.

In the wake of the fabricated events of December 5 the Haitian government and Lavalas endured weeks of clandestine attacks, while the opposition demonstrated under heavy police protection. Then, on December 26, the great silent beast of Haiti’s poor, portrayed as violent and anti-democratic by the Haitian press and their friends in the international corporate media, awakened. Tens of thousands of Lavalas supporters hit the streets with a singular purpose and objective: that Haiti's constitution be respected and President Aristide be allowed to fulfill his five-year term in office.

The real battle had just begun, as Haiti’s long-oppressed millions prepared to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the world’s only successful slave revolution and the first black republic.

Kevin Pina is a documentary filmmaker and freelance journalist who has been working and living in Haiti for the past three years. He has been covering events in Haiti for the past decade and produced a documentary film entitled "Haiti: Harvest of Hope". Mr. Pina is also the Haiti Special Correspondent for the Flashpoints radio program on the Pacifica Network's flagship station KPFA in Berkeley CA.
http://216.239.53.104/search?q=cache:2rx5lbtE2AoJ:http://www.countercurrents.org/haiti-pina130204.htm+haiti+%22kevin+pina%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

As I write this there is an attempt to start a civil war in Haiti, engineered in the United States of America and supported by its lapdogs in Caricom and the Organization of American States. Former Haitian military men who have received "some form" of training and logistical support while hiding out in the neighboring US semi-colony, the Dominican Republic, are systematically attacking the Haitian National Police at primary strategic points along the entire route from Port-au-Prince to the Dominican Border near Ouanaminthe. Only Cap Haitien has not fallen so far as St Marc, Gonaives, and Trou du Nord a town at a key bridge between the border and Cap Haitien has been ransacked by right-wing paramilitaries, who are the armed wing of a US-funded "opposition" that cloaks itself in the name Convergence Democratique, and now falsely claims no connection with this activity.

The main road between Port-au-Prince to St. Marc to Gonaives to Cap Haitien to Trou du Nord to Ouanaminthe is often the only passable route cross country, and these seizures have effectively cut off the western coastal towns from the capital and isolated Cap Haitien, the second largest city in Haiti. At last word, these former Haitian military units--some of the same ones who worked for the notorious Duvaliers and for the savage Cedras-Francois junta--have abandoned St. Marc.

The ridiculous names like Gonaives Resistance Front that these right-wing paramilitaries have assigned themselves are already being echoed in the capitalist press, which also refers to them, idiotically, as "rebels," and to their activities as the activities of "crowds." A contact I spoke with hours ago who returned from Port-au-Prince today told me that the real crowds are those who are fleeing these fascist coup operations in the North and the massive PRO-Aristide demonstrations in the capital. This contact said the situation here is very similar in many respects to the US-supported attempt to overthrow another democratically elected government, that of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

The paramilitaries have opened ships and stores for looting, capitalizing on the desperate poverty and hunger of Haitians to direct the energy of masses into looting, in order to neutralize them politically. But it has only worked locally. My contact said that contrary to what's going on here, the Haitian masses are "crystal clear" that this is a US-supported coup attempt.

If the legitimately elected government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide fails to take aggressive action to recapture these cities, there may be a successful coup within weeks. While the tactical target of this paramilitary action is the Aristide government, the political target is--as it always has been--the popular sovereignty of the Haitian masses. It is a tragic irony that this situation has developed this far on the bicentennial of the heroic Haitian Revolution, and that it is being led by an imperial power that wants to annihilate popular sovereignty wherever it raises its head.

To help the reader understand what is going on there, I am inserting my journal from the last Aristide inauguration, and I will make some comments afterward:
etc
http://counterpunch.org/goff02142004.html

as not to counter the spin from your masters, spook. What is important is to ensure the spinifex-type spijn does not become the only take on events on the internet.

As for spinifex, as usual, he sides with us backed coups, loves seeing people being killed, hates democratic leaders doing anything except dance to washingtons tune....

So Negroponte is looking foreward to a UN peacekeeping mission. Hasnt anyone told spinifex the difference between official statements and what goes on behind closed doors?
Does the UK spy on the UN? No they say; YES says Claire Short.

--------------------------------------------------------------
'Haitians are well aware of the U.S. government's gambit. Haiti Progress, an independent leftist weekly often critical of Aristide, last spring outlined what the writer called "a multi-front strategy" the United States is carrying out for regime change in Haiti.
Progressives, at least, should have been suspicious about the team Bush put in place to manage his Haiti policy. Otto Reich at the National Security Council and Roger Noriega in the State Department are among those directing Bush's Haiti policy; joining them in orchestrating U.S. foreign policy as a whole are Elliot Abrams, John Poindexter (until his departure under fire in July) and John Negroponte. All of these men were deeply involved in the Reagan administration's dirty war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the Iran-Contra scandal. "The resurfacing of the Iran-Contra culprits has been nothing short of Orwellian in this administration," opined Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst at the National Security Archive, in News'

A better source of info on haiti is Kevin Pina:
'When the Haitian government has limited but clear successes in some areas, the international media are virtually silent. Kevin Pina has said that every time he has drawn the attention of foreign journalists at Reuters or the Associated Press to successes in the Haitian government's literacy campaign, the reporters have ignored him. One reporter finally told him to stop giving him such stories. "We are not going to report on positive programs in Haiti," Pina says he was told'
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Caribbean/UpAgainstDeathPlan_Haiti.html

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/haiti/2004/0226france.htm

isnt it strange that two of the behind-the-scenes actors in the haiti coup are calling for UNpeacekeepers. Who knows what these birds are up to.

Here is what Haitis lawyer has to say about the US involvement:
'The US lawyer representing the government of Haiti charged today that the US government is directly involved in a military coup attempt against the country’s democratically elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Ira Kurzban, the Miami-based attorney who has served as General Counsel to the Haitian government since 1991, said that the paramilitaries fighting to overthrow Aristide are being backed by Washington.

“I believe that this is a group that is armed by, trained by, and employed by the intelligence services of the United States,” Kurzban told the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!. “This is clearly a military operation, and it's a military coup.”

“There's enough indications from our point of view, at least from my point of view, that the United States certainly knew what was coming about two weeks before this military operation started,” Kurzban said. “ The United States made contingency plans for Guantanamo.”

If a direct US connection is proven, it will mark the second time in just over a decade that Washington has been involved in a coup in Haiti.

Several of the paramilitary leaders now rampaging Haiti are men who were at the forefront of the US-backed campaign of terror during the 1991-94 coup against Aristide. Among the paramilitary figures now leading the current insurrection is Louis Jodel Chamblain, the former number 2 man in the FRAPH paramilitary death squad.

Chamblain was convicted and sentenced in absentia to hard-labor for life in trials for the April 23, 1994 massacre in the pro-democracy region of Raboteau and the September 11, 1993 assassination of democracy-activist Antoine Izméry. Chamblain recently arrived in Gonaives with about 25 other commandos based in the Dominican Republic, where Chamblain has been living since 1994. They were well equipped with rifles, camouflage uniforms, and all-terrain vehicles.

Among the victims of FRAPH under Chamblain's leadership was Haitian Justice Minister Guy Malary. He was ambushed and machine-gunned to death with his bodyguard and a driver on Oct. 14, 1993. According to an October 28, 1993 CIA Intelligence Memorandum obtained by the Center for Constitutional Rights "FRAPH members Jodel Chamblain, Emmanuel Constant, and Gabriel Douzable met with an unidentified military officer on the morning of 14 October to discuss plans to kill Malary." Emmanuel "Toto" Constant, was the founder of FRAPH.

An October 1994 article by journalist Allan Nairn in The Nation magazine quoted Constant as saying that he was contacted by a US Military officer named Col. Patrick Collins, who served as defense attaché at the United States Embassy in Port-au-Prince. Constant says Collins pressed him to set up a group to "balance the Aristide movement" and do “intelligence” work against it. Constant admitted that, at the time, he was working with CIA operatives in Haiti. Constant is now residing freely in the US. He is reportedly living in Queens, NY. At the time, James Woolsey was head of the CIA.

Another figure to recently reemerge is Guy Philippe, a former Haitian police chief who fled Haiti in October 2000 after authorities discovered him plotting a coup with a group of other police chiefs. All of the men were trained in Ecuador by US Special Forces during the 1991-1994 coup. Since that time, the Haitian government has accused Philippe of master-minding deadly attacks on the Police Academy and the National Palace in July and December 2001, as well as hit-and-run raids against police stations on Haiti's Central Plateau over the following two years.

Kurzban also points to the presence of another FRAPH veteran, Jean Tatun. Along with Chamblain, Tatun was convicted of gross violations of human rights and murder in the Raboteau massacre.

“These people came through the Dominican border after the United States had provided 20,000 M-16's to the Dominican army,” says Kurzban. “I believe that the United States clearly knew about it before, and that given the fact of the history of these people, [Washington is] probably very, very deeply involved, and I think Congress needs to seriously look at what the involvement of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency has been in this operation. Because it is a military operation. It's not a rag-tag group of liberators, as has often been put in the press in the last week or two.”

Kurzban says he has hired military analysts to review photos of the weapons being used by the paramilitary groups. He says that contrary to reports in the media that the armed groups are using weapons originally distributed by Aristide, the gangs are using highly sophisticated and powerful weapons; weapons that far out-gun Aristide’s 3,000 member National Police force.

“I don't think that there's any question about the fact that the weapons that they have did not come from Haiti,” says Kurzban. “They're organized as a military commando strike force that's going from city to city.”

Kurzban says that among the weapons being used by the paramilitaries are: M-16's, M-60's, armor piercing weapons and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. “They have weapons to shoot down the one helicopter that the government has,” he said. “They have acted as a pretty tight-knit commando unit.”

Chamblain and other paramilitary leaders have said they will march on the capital, Port-au-Prince within two weeks. The US has put forth a proposal, being referred to as a peace plan, that many viewed as favorable to Aristide’s opponents. Aristide accepted the plan, but the opposition rejected it. Washington’s point man on the crisis is Roger Noriega, Undersecretary of State for Western Hemispheric Affairs.

“I think Noriega has been an Aristide hater for over a decade,” says Kurzban, adding that he believes Noriega allowed the opposition to delay their response to the plan to allow the paramilitaries to capture more territory. “My reaction was they're just giving them more time so they can take over more, that the military wing of the opposition can take over more ground in Haiti and create a fate accompli,” Kurzban said. “Indeed, as soon as they said, ‘we need an extra day,’ I predicted, unfortunately, and correctly, that they would go into Cap Haitian (Haiti’s 2nd largest city) and indeed the next morning they did.”

The leader of the “opposition” is an American citizen named Andy Apaid. He was born in New York. Haitian law does not allow dual-nationality and he has not renounced his US citizenship. In a recent statement, Congressmember Maxine Waters blasted Apaid and his opposition front, saying she believes “Apaid is attempting to instigate a bloodbath in Haiti and then blame the government for the resulting disaster in the belief that the United States will aid the so-called protestors against President Aristide and his government.”

“We have the leader of the opposition, who Mr. Noriega is negotiating with, who Secretary Powell calls and who tells Secretary Powell, you know, ‘we need a couple more days’ and Secretary Powell says ‘that's fine,’” says Kurzban. “I mean, there's some kind of theater of the absurd going on with this opposition where it's led by an American citizen, where they're just clearly stalling for time until they can get more ground covered in Haiti through their military wing, and the United States and Noriega, with a wink and nod, is kind of letting them do that.”

Kurzban says that because Aristide’s opponents rejected Washington’s plan, “the next step clearly is to send in some kind of UN peacekeeping force immediately.”

“The question is,” says Kurzban. “Will the international community stand by and allow a democracy in this hemisphere to be terminated by a brutal military coup of persons who have a very, very sordid history of gross violations of human rights?”
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0225-10.htm

here he discusses it with Amy Goodman
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/25/1613200&mode=thread&tid=25

as they say, it could only happen in america. The US elects as UN rep a man with a reputation as a facilitator of terrorism

There is a law in politics almost as old as the business itself. When one lays claim to the moral high ground, goes the saying, one should be "as Caesar's wife: above reproach." The Bush Administration inattention to that piece of wisdom is likely to cause it no end of trouble as it tries to cobble together an international coalition against terrorism.

When the US's new United Nations Ambassador John Negroponte rose to praise that body's Sept. 28 resolution on terrorism, reminding delegates that the action "obligates all member states to deny financing, support, and safe haven for terrorists," his remarks were greeted with studied silence by Latin American delegates. It is hard to cheer when you're gritting your teeth.

Twenty years ago, Negroponte was financing and supporting terrorist death squads in Honduras and providing "safe haven" for the Contras, who used sabotage and murder in their efforts to overthrow the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua.

When Negroponte took over as US Ambassador to Honduras in 1981, the outgoing Carter Administration appointee, Jack Binns, warned him that human rights abuses were on the rise. Negroponte not only ignored him, he oversaw a jump in US military aid from $3.9 million in 1981 to $77.4 million in 1984. At the time, Honduras had no internal or external enemies, but was serving as the major launch pad for the US backed Contra attacks. Locals dubbed the country the "USS Honduras."

At the time Negroponte was denying human rights violations in Honduras, the military's notorious Battalion 3-16, a secret unit trained by the CIA, and headed by Gen. Gustavo Alverez Martinez, a graduate of the US's School of the Americas, was kidnapping and murdering opponents of the government. Some 184 murders have been documented by human rights organizations, including American Jesuit priest Joseph Carney. According to a 1995 series in the Baltimore Sun exposing the US role in training the Battalion, the unit used electric shock and suffocation as its favored interrogation technique, murdering prisoners afterwards.

Honduran Congressman Efrain Diaz Aarrivillaga told the Sun he took up the issue of Battalion 3-16 with Negroponte, but said the Ambassador's attitude was one of "tolerance and silence." Diaz told the Sun, "They needed Honduras to loan its territory more than they were concerned about innocent people being killed."

Jose Miguel Vivanco, the director of Human Rights Watch/America, calls Negroponte the "ostrich ambassador," who "never saw anything wrong. He never heard about any serious rights violations. It was like he was living in another country."

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee had these reports before it when it approved Negroponte's nomination Sept.14, but in the stampede to stand with the President, it chose not to pursue them. It is a decision the Senate may come to regret. When the new UN Ambassador thunders about the damages inflicted on Americans by the New York and Washington attacks, Nicaraguans and Salvadorans may remind him that the International Court of Justice in the Hague found the US liable for $17 billion of damage inflicted on both countries during the Reagan Administration's jihad in Central America.

When Negroponte points to the 6,000 plus deaths caused by the Sept. 11 terrorism, Central Americans may sit quietly, but it is doubtful they will forget the 200,000 lives lost during their US sponsored civil wars or the two million refugees those conflicts engendered.

If Negroponte is a potential headache for the White House, Elliot Abrams, the newly appointed senior director for the National Security Council's office for Democracy, Human Rights, and International Operations is a major migraine. Abrams was a key actor in the Iran-Contra business and convicted of lying about it to Congress in 1986. What he was never charged with was covering up mass murder, murder most foul.

In December, 1981, the US trained Atlacalt Battalion rounded up the 900 residents of El Mazote in El Salvador and systemically murdered all but a few who escaped. They shot them with American M -16s, cut their throats, burned them alive, and machine gunned and macheted scores of children. The massacre was exposed by Ray Bonner of the New York Times and Alma Guillermoprieto of the Washington Post.

But their reports never received widespread circulation because Elliot Abrams covered up the atrocity. He lied, he spun, he whispered that Bonner and Guillermoprieto were rebel symps, and tossed out just enough smoke and intimidation that a timid press backed off the story. In the end it all came out when the UN Truth Commission carried out a painstaking reconstruction of the massacre in 1993. For the full story look at Mark Danner's "The Truth About El Mazote" in the Dec. 6 New Yorker magazine

Abrams' response to the Commission's findings on El Mazote and that 85% of the 22,000 extra-legal murders in El Salvador were carried out by US sponsored death squads in alliance with the Salvadoran military? "The (Reagan) Administration's record on El Salvador is one of fabulous achievement." And this is the man whom the world should listen to on democracy and human rights?

There are other terrorists whom the Bush Administration has unearthed and brought back into the fold as well. Keep an eye out for Otto Reich, the nominee for Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs. As the former head of the State Department's Latin America Office, he helped plant stories and opinion pieces praising the Contras in US newspapers. It wasn't just the stories that were phony, so were the authors. Reich' office wrote them all. He also helped spring terrorist Orlando Bosch from a Venezuelan prison in 1987. Bosch was jailed for the 1976 bombing of a Cuban commercial airplane that killed 73 people.

This is the caliber of people making speeches about fighting terrorism these days. It's enough to make the angels weep
http://eagle.westnet.gr/~cgian/negroponte.htm

'At a U.N. Security Council meeting yesterday, Caribbean nations called for a multinational force to end the violence but the United States and France said they want a political settlement before sending in any troops. '
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/27/1541244

In this instance patriotism is certainly the last refuge of scoundrels. Talk about knowing a man by the company he admires:

The man he most admires is former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet, he said. "Pinochet made Chile what it is.''
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=cache:Czv18fDAFWYJ:beautifulhorizons.typepad.com/weblog/2004/02/haiti_the_lates.html+haiti+philippe+admires+pinochet&hl=en&start=1&ie=UTF-8

keep it in circulation

the silence of the trolls on this one is deafening

Come on "M.I.M" stop the rotten childish games you are playing. It's not Brian that you are making a fool of it is you lot that will end up with egg on your faces!
What ever happened to free speach on this site huh?
Why do you hide the comments?
What harm are those hidden comments doing?
If there is a legitimate reason for it why wont you please share it with us all by placing an article on the open neswire about what the hell you are doing and why?
Please e-mail me if you will not place an article for us all to see, if you have the time?
Hide and seek is a game for children don't you think?
Independant Media , seems not!

Nice bunch of loaded questions, World Wide.

My post at http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2004/03/63706_comment.php provides links to the answers you're seeking. Any further questions should be directed to mim(at)antimedia.net (make sure the subject's obvious).
Sorry World Wide, we don't get paid to keep this site going and we've allowed ourselves to have our time and energy wasted by trolls for far too long. If you're sincere, you'll send us an email.

Nigel

ps: brian - if YOU like, I'll unhide spinifex's comments in your threads. I've noticed that you don't seem to mind his trolling and abuse too much.
Your call.

WASHINGTON -- Many black political leaders blamed President Bush yesterday for failing to focus enough on the humanitarian problems boiling in Haiti, and said the administration's unwillingness to support the government of its now-exiled president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, set a dangerous precedent.

"Democracy has a black eye in Haiti this morning," said Representative Elijah E. Cummings, the Maryland Democrat who is chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus. "By the inaction of the United States government and our allies over the last several years, the democratically elected president of Haiti has been undermined and forced to leave his country. With the sudden departure of President Aristide, the Congressional Black Caucus is very concerned that violence does not overtake the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince."

Aristide's regime fell amid complaints by opponents of corruption and ineffectiveness in dealing with the crushing poverty in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. But as rebel forces closed in on Port-au-Prince last week, black political leaders in the United States complained that the Bush administration -- unwilling to take the lead in a messy situation in a presidential election year -- was once again standing on the sidelines while a black nation descended into chaos.

"The problem for Haiti is that it's not oil-rich," said Representative Kendrick B. Meek, the Florida Democrat whose Miami district is home to the largest Haitian immigrant community in the United States. "It's a people of African descent. And they're not campaign contributors. I hate to say that, but I believe if the people's circumstances were different, I think they'd see a very different reaction from this administration."

Administration officials have rejected charges that the White House cares little about the suffering of poor, black nations.

"It's ridiculous," said National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack, who also denied claims that the administration was slow to react to unfolding events in Haiti.

The frustration of black political officials in the United States, however, is clear. Representative Charles B. Rangel, Democrat of New York, said the United States permitted Aristide's government to collapse by insisting on a political settlement before sending in troops to stabilize the situation.

"I don't know what's going on, but we are just as much a part of this coup d'etat as the rebels, as the looters or anyone else," Rangel said on ABC's "This Week." "All we had to do was to send 200, 300 troops over there and tell those people to put down the arms."

Bill Fletcher Jr., head of the TransAfrica Forum, a policy group focusing on African and Caribbean issues, was particularly critical of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's role in pursuing the Bush administration's policy on Haiti. Fletcher said black officials should not have expected Powell to urge the administration to move more forcefully in Haiti simply because he is black.

"We have to stop believing," Fletcher said. "We have to stop thinking that Colin Powell wants to do the right thing. If the brother wanted to do the right thing, he would have resigned."

Randall Robinson, former head of TransAfrica, was even more critical of Powell, calling him "the most powerful and damaging black to rise to influence in the world in my lifetime."

The State Department declined to respond to those remarks.

Black political leaders have also called on the administration to end the deportation of Haitians who were ordered back to their country before the violence there began.

Asked on Friday why those deportations have not been halted in the face of the current situation, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said: "Well, the president expects our policies to be enforced and enforced consistently."

Black political officials unhappy with the administration's response in Haiti see parallels to Liberia, where Bush was slow to heed the pleas of citizens there to help them remove their president, Charles Taylor, and end bloodshed in a country with historic ties to the United States.

Administration officials have argued that they are helping Haiti by working with France and other countries in the region to find a diplomatic solution. Bush yesterday ordered a Marine contingent to stabilize the country.

Aristide was democratically elected but forced into exile in 1991 after only seven months in office. In 1994, backed by the threat of US military intervention, Aristide returned to power and was reelected in 2000. His term, which he has vowed to complete, expires in 2006.

Aristide's critics, who now include many who were once supporters, say corruption and drug trafficking have flourished under his reign. Armed gangs and rebels insisted that he leave.

Equally troubling, Meek said, is the fact that many Haitians are not being given an opportunity to demonstrate that they are political, not economic, refugees -- a status that would allow them to get asylum in the United States.

Administration officials have viewed those fleeing the country as economic refugees looking to escape the country's crushing poverty. But Meek said the risk of being wrong could leave blood on American hands.

"We don't want to find out that we're wrong and have Haitians who were on Coast Guard cutters end up face down in the streets of Port-au-Prince," he said.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/03/01/bush_administration_assailed_as_withholding_support?mode=PF