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January 28, 2010 - No. 20 --
Supplement The Kidnapping of Haiti• The
Kidnapping of Haiti - John
Pilger, The New Stateman The Kidnapping of HaitiThe theft of Haiti has been swift and crude. On 22 January, the United States secured "formal approval" from the United Nations to take over all air and sea ports in Haiti, and to "secure" roads. No Haitian signed the agreement, which has no basis in law. Power rules in a U.S. naval blockade and the arrival of 13,000 marines, special forces, spooks and mercenaries, none with humanitarian relief training. The airport in the capital, Port-au-Prince, is now a U.S. military base and relief flights have been rerouted to the Dominican Republic. All flights stopped for three hours for the arrival of Hillary Clinton. Critically injured Haitians waited unaided as 800 American residents in Haiti were fed, watered and evacuated. Six days passed before the U.S. air force dropped bottled water to people suffering dehydration. A Very American CoupThe first TV reports played a critical role, giving the impression of widespread criminal mayhem. Matt Frei, the BBC reporter despatched from Washington, seemed on the point of hyperventilating as he brayed about the "violence" and need for "security." In spite of the demonstrable dignity of the earthquake victims, and evidence of citizens' groups toiling unaided to rescue people, and even a U.S. general's assessment that the violence in Haiti was considerably less than before the earthquake, Frei claimed that "looting is the only industry" and "the dignity of Haiti's past is long forgotten." Thus, a history of unerring U.S. violence and exploitation in Haiti was consigned to the victims. "There's no doubt," reported Frei in the aftermath of America's bloody invasion of Iraq in 2003, "that the desire to bring good, to bring American values to the rest of the world, and especially now to the Middle East ... is now increasingly tied up with military power." In a sense, he was right. Never before in so-called peacetime have human relations been as militarised by rapacious power. Never before has an American president subordinated his government to the military establishment of his discredited predecessor, as Barack Obama has done. In pursuing George W Bush's policy of war and domination, Obama has sought from Congress an unprecedented military budget in excess of $700bn. He has become, in effect, the spokesman for a military coup. For the people of Haiti the implications are clear, if grotesque. With U.S. troops in control of their country, Obama has appointed Bush to the "relief effort": a parody lifted from Graham Greene's The Comedians, set in Papa Doc's Haiti. Bush's relief effort following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 amounted to an ethnic cleansing of many of New Orleans' black population. In 2004, he ordered the kidnapping of the democratically elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and exiled him to Africa. The popular Aristide had had the temerity to legislate modest reforms, such as a minimum wage for those who toil in Haiti's sweatshops. When I was last in Haiti, I watched very young girls stooped in front of whirring, hissing binding machines at the Superior baseball plant in Port-au-Prince. Many had swollen eyes and lacerated arms. I produced a camera and was thrown out. Haiti is where America makes the equipment for its hallowed national game, for next to nothing. Haiti is where Walt Disney contractors make Mickey Mouse pyjamas, for next to nothing. The U.S. controls Haiti's sugar, bauxite and sisal. Rice-growing was replaced by imported American rice, driving people into the town and jerry-built housing. Year after year, Haiti was invaded by U.S. marines, infamous for atrocities that have been their speciality from the Philippines to Afghanistan. Bill Clinton is another comedian, having got himself appointed the UN's man in Haiti. Once fawned upon by the BBC as "Mr Nice Guy ... bringing democracy back to a sad and troubled land," Clinton is Haiti's most notorious privateer, demanding deregulation that benefits the sweatshop barons. Lately, he has been promoting a $55m deal to turn the north of Haiti into an American-annexed "tourist playground." Not for tourists is the U.S. building its fifth-biggest
embassy. Oil was found in Haiti's waters decades ago and the U.S. has
kept it in reserve until the Middle East begins to run dry. More
urgently, an occupied Haiti has a strategic importance in Washington's
"rollback" plans for Latin America. The
goal is the overthrow of the popular democracies in Venezuela, Bolivia
and Ecuador, control of Venezuela's abundant petroleum reserves, and
sabotage of the growing regional co-operation long denied by
U.S.-sponsored regimes. Obama's Next War?The first rollback success came last year with the coup against the Honduran president José Manuel Zelaya, who also dared advocate a minimum wage and that the rich pay tax. Obama's secret support for the illegal regime in Honduras carries a clear warning to vulnerable governments in central America. Last October, the regime in Colombia, long bankrolled by Washington and supported by death squads, handed the Americans seven military bases to "combat anti-U.S. governments in the region." Media propaganda has laid the ground for what may well be Obama's next war. In December, researchers at the University of the West of England published first findings of a ten-year study of BBC reporting on Venezuela. Of 304 BBC reports, only three mentioned any of the historic reforms of Hugo Chávez's government, while the majority denigrated his extraordinary democratic record, at one point comparing him to Hitler. Such distortion and servitude to western power are rife across the Anglo-American media. People who struggle for a better life, or for life itself, from Venezuela to Honduras to Haiti, deserve our support. A Haiti Disaster Relief Scenario Was Envisaged by the U.S. Military One Day Before the EarthquakeA Haiti disaster relief scenario had been envisaged at the headquarters of U.S. Southern Command SOUTHCOM in Miami one day prior to the earthquake. The holding of pre-disaster simulations pertained to the impacts of a hurricane in Haiti. They were held on January 10. (Bob Brewin, "Defense launches online system to coordinate Haiti relief efforts," complete text of article is contained in Annex). The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), which is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense (DoD), was involved in organizing these scenarios on behalf of U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM). Defined as a "Combat Support Agency," DISA has a mandate to provide IT and telecommunications, systems, logistics services in support of the U.S. military. (See DISA website: Defense Information Systems Agency). On the day prior to the earthquake, "on Monday [January 11, 2010], Jean Demay, DISA's technical manager for the agency's Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project, happened to be at the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command in Miami preparing for a test of the system in a scenario that involved providing relief to Haiti in the wake of a hurricane."[1] (emphasis added). The Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project (TISC) is a communications-information tool which "links non-government organizations with the United States [government and military] and other nations for tracking, coordinating and organizing relief efforts."[2] The TISC is an essential component of the militarization of emergency relief. The U.S. military through DISA oversees the information -- communications system used by participating aid agencies. Essentially, it is a communications sharing system controlled by the U.S. military, which is made available to approved non-governmental partner organizations. The Defense Information Systems Agency also "provides bandwidth to aid organizations involved in Haiti relief efforts." There are no details on the nature of the tests conducted on January 11 at SOUTHCOM headquarters. DISA's Jean Demay was in charge of coordinating the tests. There are no reports on the participants involved in the disaster relief scenarios. One would expect, given DISA's mandate, that the tests pertained to simulating communications. logistics and information systems in the case of a major emergency relief program in Haiti. The fundamental concept underlying DISA's Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project (TISC) is to "Achieve Interoperability with Warfighters, Coalition Partners and NGOs."[3] Upon completing the tests and disaster scenarios on January 11, TISC was considered to be, in relation to Haiti, in "an advanced stage of readiness." On January 13, the day following the earthquake, SOUTHCOM took the decision to implement the TISC system, which had been rehearsed in Miami two days earlier: "After the earthquake hit on Tuesday [January 12, 2010], Demay said SOUTHCOM decided to go live with the system. On [the following day] Wednesday [January 13, 2010], DISA opened up its All Partners Access Network, supported by the Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project, to any organization supporting Haiti relief efforts. "The information sharing project, developed with backing from both SOUTHCOM and the Defense Department's European Command, has been in development for three years. It is designed to facilitate multilateral collaboration between federal and nongovernmental agencies. "Demay said that since DISA set up a Haiti Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Community of Interest on APAN on Wednesday [the day following the earthquake], almost 500 organizations and individuals have joined, including a range of Defense units and various nongovernmental organizations and relief groups.[4] (emphasis added) DISA has a Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) Field Office in Miami. Under the Haiti Disaster Emergency Program initiated on January 12, DISA's mandate is described as part of a carefully planned military operation: "DISA is providing U.S. Southern Command with information capabilities which will support our nation in quickly responding to the critical situation in Haiti," said Larry K. Huffman, DISA's Principal Director of Global Information Grid Operations. "Our experience in providing support to contingency operations around the world postures us to be responsive in meeting USSOUTHCOM's requirements." "DISA, a Combat Support Agency, engineers and [sic] provides command and control capabilities and enterprise infrastructure to continuously operate and assure a global net-centric enterprise in direct support to joint warfighters, National level leaders, and other mission and coalition partners across the full spectrum of operations. As DoD's satellite communications leader, DISA is using the Defense Satellite Communications System to provide frequency and bandwidth support to all organizations in the Haitian relief effort. This includes Super High Frequency missions that are providing bandwidth for U.S. Navy ships and one Marine Expeditionary Unit that will arrive shortly on station to provide medical help, security, and helicopters among other support. This also includes all satellite communications for the U.S. Air Force handling round-the-clock air traffic control and air freight operations at the extremely busy Port-Au-Prince Airport. DISA is also providing military Ultra High Frequency channels and contracting for additional commercial SATCOM missions that greatly increase this capability for relief efforts.[5] (emphasis added) In the immediate wake of the earthquake, DISA played a key supportive role to SOUTHCOM, which was designated by the Obama administration as the de facto "lead agency" in the U.S. Haitian relief program. The underlying system consists in integrating civilian aid agencies into the orbit of an advanced communications information system controlled by the U.S. military. "DISA is also leveraging a new technology in Haiti that is already linking NGOs, other nations and U.S. forces together to track, coordinate and better organize relief efforts"[6] Notes1. Bob Brewin, op cit. AnnexDefense Launches Online
System to Coordinate Haiti
Relief Efforts As personnel representing hundreds of government and nongovernmental agencies from around the world rush to the aid of earthquake-devastated Haiti, the Defense Information Systems Agency has launched a Web portal with multiple social networking tools to aid in coordinating their efforts. On Monday [January 11, 2010, a day before the earthquake], Jean Demay, DISA's technical manager for the agency's Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project, happened to be at the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command in Miami preparing for a test of the system in a scenario that involved providing relief to Haiti in the wake of a hurricane. After the earthquake hit on Tuesday [January 12, 2010], Demay said SOUTHCOM decided to go live with the system. On Wednesday [January 13, 2010], DISA opened up its All Partners Access Network, supported by the Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project, to any organization supporting Haiti relief efforts. The information sharing project, developed with backing from both SOUTHCOM and the Defense Department's European Command, has been in development for three years. It is designed to facilitate multilateral collaboration between federal and nongovernmental agencies. Demay said that since DISA set up a Haiti Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Community of Interest on APAN on Wednesday, almost 500 organizations and individuals have joined, including a range of Defense units and various nongovernmental organizations and relief groups. APAN provides a series of collaboration tools, including geographical information systems, wikis, YouTube and MySpace-like pages and multilingual chat rooms. Meanwhile, other organizations are tackling different technological challenges. Gianluca Bruni, the Dubai-based information technology chief for emergency preparedness and response for the World Food Programme, is setting up networks and systems to support United Nations and nongovernmental organizations in Haiti. WFP already has dispatched two communications kits to Haiti, with satellite systems that operate at 1 megabit per second and can support up to 100 users. It also has sent laptop computers, Wi-Fi access points and long-range point-to-point wireless systems to connect remote users to the satellite terminals. Bruni said eventually WFP plans to set up cyber cafés in Haiti for use all relief workers in the country. Jon Anderson, a DISA spokesman, said the agency is supplying 10 megabits of satellite capacity to Navy, Marine and Air Force units engaged in the Haiti relief operation. Many of the relief organizations and agencies in Haiti are bringing their own radio systems to the country. DISA has deployed a three-person team from its Joint Spectrum Management Element to help manage radio frequency spectrum. The Joint Forces Command's Joint Communications Support Element deployed two teams equipped with satellite systems and VoIP phones to support SOUTCOM in Port-au-Prince late Wednesday. Those systems were operational "in a matter of hours," said JCSE Chief of Staff Chris Wilson. The organization will send another team to Haiti in the next few days. Wilson said JCSE was able to get its gear into Haiti quickly because the systems already were loaded on pallets in Miami in preparation for an exercise that has been canceled. So many governments and agencies from around the world have responded to the crisis in Haiti that they have overwhelmed the ability of the Port-au-Prince airport to handle incoming relief flights. The Federal Aviation Administration has had a ground-stop on aircraft headed for Haiti for much of the past two days. FAA warned in an advisory Friday that "due to limited ramp space at Port-au-Prince airport," with the exception of international cargo flights, "the Haitians are not accepting any aircraft into their airspace." The advisory added that domestic U.S. military and civilian flights to Haiti must be first be cleared by its command center. Exemptions will be based solely on the basis of ramp space. The agency also starkly warned "there is no available fuel" at the Port-au-Prince airport. An Intense and Short History of HaitiIf you shared my pain you would not continue to make me
suffer, to torture me, to deny me my dignity and my rights, especially
my rights to self-determination and self-expression. Six years ago you sent your Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to perform an action illegal under the laws of your country, my country and of the international community of nations. It was an act so outrageous, so bestially vile and wicked that your journalists and news agencies, your diplomats and politicians to this day cannot bring themselves to truthfully describe or own up to the crime that was committed when U.S. Ambassador James Foley, a career diplomat, arrived at the house of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide with a bunch of CIA thugs and U.S. Marines to kidnap the president of Haiti and his wife. The Aristides were stowed aboard a CIA plane normally
used for 'renditions' of suspected terrorists to the worldwide U.S.
gulag of dungeons and torture chambers. The plane, on which the Aristides are listed as "cargo," flew to Antigua -- an hour away -- and remained on the ground in Antigua while Colin Powell's State Department and the CIA tried to blackmail and bribe various African countries to accept ("give asylum to") the kidnapped president and his wife. The Central African Republic -- one of George W Bush's
'Dark Corners of the World' -- agreed for an undisclosed sum, to give
the Aristides temporary asylum. Before any credible plot can be designed and paid for -- for the disappearance of the Aristides -- they are rescued by friends, flown to temporary asylum in Jamaica where the Government cravenly yielded to the blackmail of Condoleezza Rice to deny them the permanent asylum to which they were entitled and which most Jamaicans had hoped for. Meanwhile, in Haiti, the U.S. Marines protected an
undisciplined ragbag of rapists and murderers to allow them entry to
the capital. The Marines chased the medical students out of the new
Medical School established by Aristide with Cuban help and teachers.
The Marines bivouac in the school, going
out on nightly raids, trailed by fleets of ambulances with body bags,
hunting down Fanmi Lavalas activists described as 'chimeres' --
terrorists. The real terrorists, led by two convicted murderers, Chamblain and Philippe, assisted the Marines in the eradication of 'chimeres' until the Marines were replaced by foreign troops, paid by the United Nations, who took up the hunt on behalf of the civilised world -- France, Canada, the U.S. and Brazil. The terrorists and the remains of the Duvalier tontons
and the CIA-bred FRAPF declared open season on the remnants of
Aristide's programmes to build democracy. They burnt down the new
museum of Haitian culture, destroyed the children's television station
and generally laid waste
to anything and everything which could remind Haitians of their
glorious history. Haitians don't know that without their help Latin America might still be part of the Spanish Empire and Simon Bolivar a brief historical footnote. Imagine, Niggers Speaking French!About 90 years ago when Professor Woodrow Wilson was
president of the USA, his secretary of state was a fundamentalist
lawyer named William Jennings Bryan who had three times run
unsuccessfully for president. The Americans had decided to invade Haiti to collect debts owed by Haiti to Citibank. General Smedley Butler, the only American soldier to have twice won the Congressional Medal of Honour, described his role in the U.S. Army: "I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half-a-dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. General Butler said: "I suspected I was just part of a
racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. My mental faculties remained
in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is
typical in the military service." Butler compared himself unfavourably
to Al Capone. He said his official
racketeering made Capone look like an amateur. Secretary Bryan was dumbfounded by the Haitians. "Imagine," he said, "Niggers speaking French!" Smedley Butler and Bryan were involved in Haiti because of something that happened nearly a hundred years before. The French slave-masters, expelled from Haiti and defeated again when they tried to re-enslave the Haitians, connived with the Americans to starve them into submission by a trade embargo. With no sale for Haitian sugar, the country was weak and run-down when a French fleet arrived bearing a demand for reparations. Having bought their freedom in blood, the Haitians were to purchase it again in gold. The French demanded, essentially, that the Haitians pay France an amount equivalent to 90 per cent of the entire Haitian budget for the foreseeable future. When this commitment proved too arduous to honour, the City Bank offered the Haitians a "debt exchange," paying off the French in exchange for a lower-interest, longer-term debt. The terms may have seemed better but were just as usurious and it was not paid off until 1947. Because of the debt the Americans invaded Haiti, seized the Treasury, exiled the president, their Jim Crow policies were used to divide the society, to harass the poor and finally provoked a second struggle for freedom which was one of the most brutal episodes in colonial history. Long before Franco bombed Guernica, exciting the horror and revulsion of civilised people, the Americans perfected their dive-bombing techniques against unarmed Haitian peasants, many of whom had never seen aircraft before. The Americans set up a Haitian Army in the image of their Jim Crow Marines, and it was these people, the alien and alienated Élite who, with some conscripted blacks like the Duvaliers, have ruled Haiti for most of the last century. When I flew over Haiti for the first time in 1959 en
route from New York to San Juan, Puerto Rico, I saw for the first time
the border between the green Dominican Republic and brown Haiti. First-world journalists interpret the absence of trees on the Haitian side to the predations of the poor, disregarding the fact that Western religion and American capitalism were mainly responsible. Why is it that nowhere else in the Caribbean is there similar deforestation? Haiti's Dessalines constitution offered sanctuary to every escaped slave of any colour. All such people of whatever colour were deemed 'black' and entitled to citizenship. Only officially certified 'blacks' could own land in Haiti. The American occupation, anticipating Hayek, Freedman and Greenspan, decided that such a rule was a hindrance to development. The assistant secretary of the U.S. Navy, one Franklin D Roosevelt, was given the job of writing a new, modern constitution for Haiti. This constitution meant foreigners could own land.
Within a very short time the lumberjacks were busy, felling old growth
Mahogany and Caribbean Pine for carved doors for the rich and mahogany
speedboats, boardroom tables seating 40, etc. The devastated land was
put to produce rubber, sisal for
ropes and all sorts of pie in the sky plantations. When President Paul Magloire came to Jamaica 50 years ago Haitians were still speaking of an Artibonite dam for electricity and irrigation. But the ravages of the recent past were too much to recover. As Marguerite Laurent (EziliDanto) writes: "Don't expect to learn how a people with a Vodun culture that reveres nature and especially the Mapou (oak-like or ceiba pendantra/bombax) trees, and other such big trees as the abode of living entities and therefore as sacred things, were forced to watch the Catholic Church, during Rejete -- the violent anti-Vodun crusade -- gather whole communities at gunpoint into public squares, and forced them to watch their agents burn Haitian trees in order to teach Haitians their Vodun Gods were not in nature, that the trees were the 'houses of Satan.'" In partnership with the U.S., the mulatto President Elie Lescot (1941-45) summarily expelled peasants from more than 100,000 hectares of land, razing their homes and destroying more than a million fruit trees in the vain effort to cultivate rubber on a large plantation scale. Also, under the pretext of the Rejete campaign, thousands of acres of peasant lands were cleared of sacred trees so that the U.S. could take their lands for agribusiness. After the FloodNorman Manley used to say "River Come Down" when his party seemed likely to prevail. The Kreyol word Lavalas conveys the same meaning. Since the Haitian people's decisive rejection of the Duvalier dictatorships in the early '90s, their spark and leader has been Jean-Bertrand Aristide whose bona fides may be assessed from the fact that the CIA and conservative Americans have been trying to discredit him almost from the word go. As he put it in one of his books, his intention has been
to build a paradise on the garbage heap bequeathed to Haiti by the U.S.
and the Elite. The bill of particulars is too long to go into here, but the destruction of the new museum of culture, the breaking up of the medical school, the destruction of the children's television station gives you the flavour. But the essence is captured in the brutal attempt to obliterate the spirit of Haitian community; the attempt to destroy Lavalas by murdering its men and raping its women, the American-directed subversion of a real police force, the attacks on education and the obliteration of the community self-help systems which meant that when Hurricane Jeanne and all the other weather systems since have struck Haiti, many more have died than in any other country similarly stricken. In an earthquake, totally unpredictable, every bad factor is multiplied. The American blocking of international aid means that there is no modern water supply anywhere, no town planning, no safe roads, none of the ordinary infrastructure of any other Caribbean state. There are no building standards, no emergency shelters, no parks. So, when I write about mothers unwittingly walking on dead babies in the mud, when I write about people so poor they must eat patties made of clay and shortening, when I write about people with their faces 'chopped off' or about any of eight million horror stories from the crime scene that is Haiti, please don't tell me you share their pain or mine.
If you share my pain and their pain, why don't you stop causing it? Why don't you stop the torture? If you want to understand me, look at the woman in the picture, and the children half-buried with her. You cannot hear their screams because they know there is no point in screaming. It will do no more good than voting. What is she thinking: perhaps it is something like this -- No, mister! You cannot share my pain! Some time, perhaps after the camera is gone, people will return to dig us out with their bare hands. But not you.
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