Bringing Hell to Haiti: Killing Hope

[DuctapeFatwa]

“Haiti, again, is ablaze”, Jeffrey Sachs, professor of economics at Columbia University, writes: “Almost nobody, however, understands that today’s chaos was made in Washington - deliberately, cynically, and steadfastly. History will bear this out.” (Sachs, ‘Fanning the flames of political chaos in Haiti’, The Nation, February 28, 2004)

As Sachs argues, the Bush Administration has been pursuing policies likely to topple Aristide since 2001...When he returned to Washington, Sachs spoke to senior officials in the IMF, World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, and Organisation of American States. He describes how he expected to hear that these organisations would be rushing to help Haiti. Not so:

“Instead, I was shocked to learn that they would all be suspending aid, under vague ‘instructions’ from the US. America, 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 ... Nor were the results of the legislative elections in 2000 in doubt: Aristide’s party had also won in a landslide.”

Some time in the future when Western interests are under attack, the media will once again obediently rise up in outrage as the forces of violence and terror threaten some distant democracy (real or imagined). But, for now, our journalists and editors are happy to accept that Aristide “had to go”,...Forget the democratic process. Forget the landslide victories that make a mockery of the popularity of Bush and Blair. Forget the tidal waves of blood that preceded the first, imperfect sign that Haiti might at last be waking from the nightmare of history ­ of endless dictatorships, endless poverty, endless military coups bringing torture and death to the suffering people. None of that matters. What matters to the media is power. What power says goes.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Mar04/Edwards0302.htm

[sadiesworld]

1. Facist pigs romping in their slop.

[DuctapeFatwa]

2. kick

[Dirk39]

3. Chile 1973, Haiti 2004:

Host Michael Goldfarb

"Make the economy scream." That's what President Richard M. Nixon told his CIA chief Richard Helms after the people of Chile had the temerity to freely elect the Marxist Salvador Allende in 1970.

"Make the economy Scream!" I wonder if Nixon had the screams of Luis Munoz in mind. Following the U.S. engineered coup against the Allende government. Munoz, a union activist, spent 18 months in the torture chambers of General Augusto Pinochet. If Nixon had bothered to ask what an economy screaming actually sounds like Luis Munoz would have told him precisely what he told me, "The screams are extraordinary. You cannot believe your body could produce those kinds of sounds."

*

I was in college from 1968 through 1972 and was as involved in political issues as much as most people. I am not nostalgic for those days but I do miss the moral clarity of events. The right and the wrong were so clearly defined. Of all the events of that time what happened in Chile got deepest under my skin. More than Vietnam, more than the culture wars, more than the fight for racial equality, Chile burned into my heart.

http://insideout.wbur.org/documentaries/torture/notebook.asp

Just a little reminder of that other September, 11

Dirk

[seemslikeadream]

4. Thanks for the reminder Dirk

n/t