Haiti: New USA aircraft carrier half-way between Cuba and Venezuela

[Say_What]

For anyone who wonders why Uncle Sam would want to have his boot on Haiti's neck. What this article fails to mention is that Haiti is also the perfect place for the CIA's drug business (see second article).


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Rumours about a Washington-Paris plotted coup to oust Arisitide flooded world press as the former Haitian president said, from his exile in Africa, that he had been hijacked by US marines.
No matter the case, the new geopolitical scenario in the Caribbean intimidates "hostile" countries in Latin America.

Shortly after former Haitian president Jean Bertrand Arisitide landed in the Central African Republic, he said he had to resign under pressure of US marines in Port Au Prince, who then forced him into a plane. According to his testimony, later confirmed by two US congressmen, Aristide and his closer collaborators were not told where they were going, they landed on Antigua first, then flew for another six hours and landed somewhere else where they stayed for three hours before reaching Africa.

Quickly, the US State Department denied versions about a Washington-Paris plotted coup to oust Arisitide from power. However, the Pentagon confirmed 200 marines are already operating in the Caribbean island and another 2,000 were underway as part of a UN peace-keeping deployment. French troops have also already disembarked in Latin American poorest country to secure a "peaceful transition".

One day after Aristide fell, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez warned the United States and his internal opposition that he was not Aristide and Venezuela was not Haiti. The same day, Cuban Foreign Minister, Felipe Perez Roque, said in an interview to an Argentine daily that his government was "concerned" on a possible US invasion of Cuba.

http://english.pravda.ru/world/20/91/368/12207_Haiti.html

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Haiti’s Nightmare:
The Cocaine Coup & The CIA Connection

It was a day before the scheduled return of Haiti’s exiled president Jean Betrand Aristide, and it was clear that the October 30, 1993 deadline for a return to democratic rule in the western hemisphere’s poorest nation could not occur. Aristide, a Roman Catholic priest who had been elected nearly three years before with 70 percent of the vote in Haiti’s first free election, was speaking to a packed session of the United Nations General Assembly.

In a dramatic move, Aristide told the diplomats that the military government of Haiti had to yield the power that was to end Haiti’s role in the drug trade, a trade financed by Colombia’s Cali cartel, that had exploded in the months following the coup. Aristide told the UN that each year Haiti is the transit point for nearly 50 tons of cocaine worth more than a billion dollars, providing Haiti’s military rulers with $200 million in profits.

Aristide’s electrifying accusations opened the floodgate of even more sinister revelations. Massachusetts senator John Kerry heads a subcommittee concerned with international terrorism and drug trafficking that turned up collusion between the CIA and drug traffickers during the late 1980s’ Iran Contra hearings.

Kerry had developed detailed information on drug trafficking by Haiti’s military rulers that led to the indictment in Miami in 1988, of Lt. Col. Jean Paul. The indictment was a major embarrassment to the Haitian military, especially since Paul defiantly refused to surrender to U.S. authorities. It was just a month before thousands of U.S. troops invaded Panama and arrested Manuel Noriega who, like Col. Paul, was also under indictment for drug trafficking in Florida.

<http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/RIE402A.html>

[Say_What]

1. "The fire this time in Haiti was US-fueled" --Jeffrey Sachs

Jeffrey Sachs was one of the witnesses for the House Committee hearing on the situation in Haiti yesterday on CSPAN--catch him if you can he was AWESOME. He and others are in touch with Aristide who is now in fear for their safety. Sachs demanded that the US guarantee his safety and let him speak to the world.

Also, CARICOM has a statement that demands in part that Aristide be restored as president!! That came at the very end of the hearing announced by one of the House Reps!!

Here's clips from an article that Sachs wrote a few days ago.

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... Haiti was clearly in a desperate condition: the most impoverished country in the Western Hemisphere, with a standard of living comparable to sub-Saharan Africa despite being only a few hours by air from Miami. cLife expectancy was 52 years. Children were chronically hungry.

Of every 1,000 children born, more than 100 died before their fifth birthday. An AIDS epidemic, the worst in the Caribbean, was running unchecked. The health system had collapsed. Fearing unrest, tourists and foreign investors were staying away, so there were no jobs to be had.

But Aristide was enormously popular in early 2001. Hopes were high that he would deliver progress against the extraordinary poverty. Together with Dr. Paul Farmer, the legendary AIDS doctor in Haiti, I visited villages in Haiti's Central Plateau, asking people about their views of politics and Aristide.? Everybody referred to the president affectionately as "Titid." Here, clearly, was an elected leader with the backing of Haiti's poor, who constituted the bulk of the population.

When I returned to Washington, I spoke to senior officials in the IMF, World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, and Organization of American States. I expected to hear that these international organizations would be rushing to help Haiti.

Instead, I was shocked to learn that they would all be suspending aid, under vague "instructions" from the US. Washington, it seemed, was unwilling to release aid to Haiti because of irregularities in the 2000 legislative elections, and was insisting that Aristide make peace with the political opposition before releasing any aid.

The US position was a travesty. Aristide had been elected president in an indisputable landslide. He was, without doubt, the popularly elected leader of the country -- a claim that President George W. Bush cannot make about himself.

<http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2004/03/01/2003100742/print>