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to "develop" Haiti. And it's interesting how scandals like this surface when it is convenient for US imperial purposes. Also, condemnation from Michel Martelly, President of 15% of Haitian voters, makes me uneasy. He is a U.S. tool, product of an egregiously US-rigged election, and has the makings of a Uribe-type U.S. Mob Boss.
I am certainly NOT being an apologist for UN peacekeepers who have committed heinous crimes and murders. Those responsible need to be prosecuted and the security situation needs to be evaluated, including command of those troops. But I am keenly aware of how much money, private corporate contracts and opportunities for egregious graft, are at stake for the U.S. This was why they axed Preval's successor and kept Aristde off the ballot----the billions in aid money controlled by Clinton and someone who ought to be in jail himself, George W. Bush. Are they trying to muscle out LatAm countries?
Do you have any notion of what the US military presence is now in Haiti? Do they still control and run the airport? How many U.S. soldiers or military or other 'contractors'? Ships? Planes? Military installations? Food and supply depots? Who all is at the trough?
When the U.S. wants oil, it turns its propaganda machine and then its war machine on whoever controls the oil. I know there is an oil issue in Haiti--can't remember the details right now, but it had to do with distribution of oil/gas. Preval was acting in Haitians' interest on the matter, as I recall--and that was one more reason for the US. to dump his successor. But the U.S. has other goals as well, all to do with our corporate rulers and war profiteers, and nothing to do with us or with the needs of people whom our rulers are corralling into their imperial borders--in this case, their "circle the wagons" area of Central America/the Caribbean, against the evil Leftists in South America. Haiti has a prostrate slave labor workforce all primed to accept any shit wages that are offered--for U.S. corporate global trade purposes. But perhaps more important, Haiti is in a strategic spot, so close to Cuba. It is located at about 12 o'clock on the circle, right across the water from Venezuela's Caribbean oil coast and the Dutch Antilles, off that coast, where there is a USAF spy base, in a very dicey area where the U.S. and Colombian militaries are building a military base only 20 miles from Venezuela, overlooking the Gulf of Venezuela and its oil reserves and facilities. And we now have the US 4th Fleet (mothballed since WW II) roaming this very area (reconstituted by the Bush Junta).
This is a very contested area--with a mixture of U.S. client states and independent states in the scattering of islands around the Caribbean and including the coasts of Venezuela and Colombia, with Central America to the east--where the contestedness of the region is very stark, with, for instance, Nicaragua (leftist government--the Sandinistas), on the one hand, and the U.S. rightwing coup state of Honduras right next to it. Then you have Cuba--communist government on one end of the island and U.S. torture prison on the other. You have a mixture of U.S. "free trade for the rich" client states (Costa Rica, Jamaica, Honduras) and leftist ALBA states (the barter trade group organized by Venezuela and Cuba) (Nicaragua, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica, Barbados, and others, as well as Venezuela, Ecuador and Cuba), and some in-between states--El Salvador and Guatemala, with leftist governments but constricted by the US.
In South America, the "contest" is over. South Americans have declared and won their independence--and even Colombia cannot resist the peace, independence and prosperity that South American Leftists are creating. But control of the Caribbean and Central America is still very much at issue, between the citizens running their own affairs or the U.S. dictating to them.
Anyone wondering why the U.S. is bothering with Haiti, this is mostly why--its strategic location for the next oil war. (Believe me, the Pentagon has it all mapped out on their Big Dartboard). U.S. interest in Haiti has NOTHING to do with the welfare of the Haitian people, who would flee U.S. control in a second if they could. They would go way to the Left if they were free to do so. As it is, the U.S. forbade their major political party--Lavalas--which represents about 75% of Haitians--from appearing on the ballot AT ALL. Why is a very important question. In the immediate reality, it's to control the billions in earthquake aid; but, in the long term, it is Venezuela's, Ecuador's and Brazil's oil.
These are the only tactics that work any more for the U.S. corporate rulers and war profiteers--bludgeoning people into their sphere, as in Honduras and Haiti--and plotting and engaging in war.
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