CUBA: USAID Replaces Corrupt Franco with Ex-CANF Capo

A Story Worthy of Its Own Novela
GRANMA INTERNATIONAL
Havana. May 13, 2008
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2008/mayo/mar13/franco.html

BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD—Granma International staff writer—

• IN order to “solve” the systematic fraud uncovered in its accounts by a
General Accountability Office (GAO) investigation a few months back, the
USAID has replaced the corrupt official Adolfo Franco with none other than
José Cárdenas, a former director of the Cuban-American National Foundation
(CANF), the organization that was most aided by the squandering of federal
funds in fraudulent operations.

Franco, a high-ranking Bush official “caught” by the federal auditing
services presenting millions to Cuban-American mafia capos, suddenly
announced in January 2007 that he was resigning from his post at USAID – the
supposed U.S. Agency for supposed International Development – to join the
campaign team of presidential aspirant John McCain. For those who do not
know it, McCain is president of the executive of the International
Republican Institute (IRI), an intervention mechanism suddenly subsidized to
the tune of millions of dollars by USAID.

Franco’s exit occurred a few weeks after the publication of the GAO report,
which demonstrated concealment of the whereabouts of $65.4 million given
over 10 years by the federal official to his buddies in Miami and Washington
in the framework of a subversive anti-Cuba operation.

His replacement, José Cárdenas, the son of Colombian parents from Medellín,
was a top executive member of CANF from 1986.

He was director of research and publications, a spokesman for the
organization and finally chief lobbyist for the Foundation when that mafia
organization had a luxury “embassy” in Washington, a real-estate complex
bought in 1986 for $1.7 million by Jorge Mas Canosa.

For years, Cárdenas was one of the great defenders of Radio and TV Martí,
financed by the U.S. government to overthrow the Cuban Revolution via media
warfare and subversion. According to the U.S. press itself, tens of millions
have been squandered on that institution, well-known in Miami as a refuge
for friends of Bush and a sanctuary for unscrupulous officials.

After the bankruptcy of the mafiosi “embassy” in the federal capital,
Cárdenas moved on to become principal advisor of the Republican Senate
Committee for Latin America.

He is a close friend of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and her two bodyguards, the
Díaz-Balart brothers. It is said that he played a part in the development of
privileged relations between the three politicos and right-wing Colombian
circles of dubious reputation.

LOS ANGELES TIMES TELLS ALL

Washington’s interference in Cuba is best described by the word “barefaced,”
after reading a recent report in the Los Angeles Times in which Cárdenas
describes how the Washington overseas corruption agencies are to spend $45
million designated for subversion in Cuba during the present year.

Without awaiting the announced tenders, the official reveals that, from now,
the “greater part” of the $45 million assigned to Cuba is to be spent on
“cell phones and Internet equipment.” Preparing the ground for new
disappearances of funds, he adds that there is a risk of the “regime seizing
a lot of material…”

The Times reminds its readers that the GAO audit of USAID’s anti-Cuban
activities reported a number of slapdash purchases by the contracted Miami
“fighters:” cashmere sweaters, Godiva chocolates, Nintendo games and Sony
Play Stations, supposedly destined to grease the palms of the staff of
informants at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana.

Cárdenas confirmed to the Los Angeles Times that USAID is to begin
channeling its anti-Cuba millions via Prague, where it has its allies thanks
to the not-so-altruistic cooperation of Petr “Peter” Kolar, the Czech
ambassador in Washington, a worthy student of the U.S. special services.

According to Cárdenas, the money is to be largely distributed among a number
of European NGO’s.

“Given that they are not U.S. organizations, it will be easier for their
staff members to enter Cuba and establish contact with the people,” affirmed
Franco’s replacement with astonishing candor.

Although the announced bids have not been awarded, it is already known that
the Czech NGO People in Need and the French Reporters sans frontiers are
among the winners of this exceptional millionaire lottery.

While the USAID webpage has been announcing for weeks a meeting in
Washington for “anyone” who wishes to present projects and apply for part of
the booty, the winners of this new version of an old trick are already known
in Miami.

About one month ago an unexpected police investigation “blew” Felipe Sixto,
the former right-hand man of Frank Calzón, CIA agent and millionaire owner
of the so-called Center for a Free Cuba. The White House official, a very
special advisor to the presidency, had been siphoning off hundreds of
thousands of dollars over the years without his boss – he said so himself –
having any doubts about him.

A show recently organized by Kolar and his troupe in the Coral Gables
Biltmore Hotel clearly disclosed the new subversion plan against Cuba dreamt
up by the Langley hardheads. Cuban-American Senator Mel Martínez, who was
present at the meeting, stressed the need to involve “other countries” in
the anti-Cuba strategy.

It cannot be denied that José Cárdenas, the new USAID “administrator” for
Cuba and Latin America, has experience.

In 2004, while he was working in another State Department post, was
personally charged by Bush to “review” his imperial Annexation Plan for the
island. Among other things, the plan proposed to throw tens of millions of
dollars at all those Miami groups, whose links with the worst forms of
terrorism against Cuba are even documented in FBI files.

Translated by Granma International •

HAITI: Neo-liberal Roots of Haiti’s Food Crisis - Interview of Kevin Pina

May 5, 2008

Kevin Pina is an independent journalist and filmmaker and the founding editor of the Haiti Information Project, an alternative news service providing coverage and analysis of developments in Haiti. He talked to Emmanuel Santos about the roots of the food crisis in Haiti.

WHAT IS the current situation in Haiti after the April protests?

UNFORTUNATELY, IT is a return to business as usual. What I mean by that is although institutions like the United Nations, Organization of American States, International Monetary Fund and others are all talking about pouring more aid and assistance into Haiti, the root causes of poverty are still not being addressed.

All of this additional aid, funneled through the international community and a myriad of non-governmental organizations on the ground in Haiti, may help in the short term, but it will only serve to compound the existing economic problems in the long run. You cannot alleviate the problem by making Haitians more dependent upon foreign largess and handouts. More free rice will not help local production or address the larger problem of Haiti’s unjust economic system that is controlled by a few wealthy families.

While it is true that a spike in world food prices precipitated the recent unrest in Haiti, it is also clear the country was left more vulnerable to such an event by virtue of the predatory economic system controlled by a few family monopolies in Haiti.

The roots of this phenomenon lie with a fundamental shift away from local production of food products toward importation of these basic essentials and higher profits for Haiti’s wealthy elite. It really began in the 1980s and coincides with the “Reagan Revolution” in the United States and a foreign policy that placed emphasis on the “private sector” as the motor of society in providing opportunities for the poor majority.

From that time on, the only way to receive U.S. foreign assistance was to embrace a dichotomy that dictated the only way to help the poor was to create more business opportunities for the wealthy. It was an export of the “trickle-down” theory and what became known as “Reaganomics,” which over time became the major thrust of U.S. foreign policy, especially in the Caribbean and Latin America.

Collective solutions along with nationalization and protection of local resources and production were demonized and attacked by the proponents of this new ideology that placed profits ahead of what they called socialist and communist systems that offered any resistance. Remember this was during the Cold War and before the fall of the USSR.

During that same period, a major transition occurred in Haiti. The Mevs, one of the wealthiest families in Haiti, bought the Haitian American Sugar Company, or HASCO, which had been one of the major sugar producers in the world.

The Mevs realized they would never be allowed to penetrate the U.S. market while it was controlled by the American company C&H Sugar, based in Hawaii. It made more economic sense for them to buy HASCO and sell off its equipment in exchange for positioning themselves as the major importer of sugar to Haiti.

This became the contemporary economic model for Haiti’s wealthy elite that constitutes 1 percent of the population but controls more than 50 percent of Haiti’s collective wealth today. Haiti’s elite eventually did the same for rice, beans and corn because they realized they could maximize profits by controlling the importation of basic food products, rather than investing in national production. Controlling a monopoly on the importation of basic foodstuffs was far more profitable than investing in locally grown products.

The real hypocrisy of this system comes into play when you realize the contribution to the recent “food riots” that led to the fall of Haitian Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis by the so-called Group of Friends of Haiti, the United Nations and Haiti’s elite.

Haiti has never been a free market; it’s a captive market of 8.5 million who have no choice who they purchase basic staples from. There is no competition, as the few families who control the import of rice and beans have never tolerated it.

They have historically resorted to violence, coups and corruption to protect their interests. Yet these are the same families who have benefited most from the intervention of the international community since the ouster of Jean-Bertrand Aristide on February 29, 2004. Their profits have nearly doubled during this time period, and left the country vulnerable to the recent spike in international prices for staples such as rice and beans.

Another major impact of the Reagan Revolution was to impose the current neoliberal economic model through institutions such as the Inter-American Development Bank, International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

This model of development demands that poor countries like Haiti cut back on government spending for social services such as health care and education, privatize government-owned entities such as Haiti’s electric company Electricite de Haiti (EDH), and end import tariffs of goods such as rice and beans that protect local production.

Another element of hypocrisy in this system is that while countries like Haiti cannot tax imported rice and beans, Haiti’s elite have partnered with large agribusinesses in places like California, Idaho and Montana–which receive large U.S. government subsidies to produce the same products at cheaper prices. So while the current system condemns import tariffs as a form of “protectionism,” it allows large producers in the U.S. to receive subsidies to grow these products.

A few families that control a monopoly on the import market then buy and sell food staples such as rice and beans at a price local farmers can’t possible compete with. This has created a system where a few middlemen get wealthier, while destroying local production–thus making Haitians more dependent upon imports to meet their needs.

It is a vicious practice that has decimated local production in Haiti while solidifying the grip of a few families on the economy.

This is exactly what left Haiti vulnerable to the recent spike in world food prices and resulted in the population taking to the streets last April in angry protests. Haiti’s elite controls a captive market of 8.5 million people, who depend on them for the importation of basic food products without competition.

We also have to realize that there is very little wealth and surplus being created in Haiti, and consequently, only a small percentage of the population is gainfully employed. The majority is able to survive because their hardworking families and friends living abroad are sending them remittances of over $1.5 billion a year. That’s only the money sent through wire transfer services and banks, and doesn’t include the large number of Haitians who bring cash on their persons to hand out when they return for a visit.

So in reality, these so-called free-market capitalists are really competing over their share of these remittances, and not new wealth being generated in Haiti. Money that comes from thousands of Haitians living primarily in the U.S., Canada and Europe is then redistributed into the hands of a few families that control a monopoly on the importation of food, especially rice and beans.

Another tenet of the neoliberal system is that the free movement of capital must remain unfettered. The Haitian elite’s profits, from controlling this captive market and a monopoly on imports, don’t stay in Haiti. Haiti’s elite, as a rule, rarely reinvests in infrastructure, pays its taxes or creates new businesses that might result in more employment for decent wages.

Instead, they reinvest their profits back from where they originated–back to the United States, Canada and Europe, where they are used to buy luxury properties, start offshore businesses or sit in a bank collecting interest. It is also used to pay for lawyers and lobbyists in Washington D.C., New York, Ottawa, Paris and Brussels, to insure this profit machine remains intact for as long as possible.

What the United Nations and international community have done in Haiti is to institutionalize this system of doing business. Rather than placing emphasis on real competition and the creation of small- and medium-size businesses in Haiti, they continue to work with the country’s wealthy elite, which is part of the larger problem. This fundamental question of Haiti’s economy isn’t resolved by any means, and can only lead to further unrest in the future.

For this analysis, I really have to acknowledge Antoine Izmery, a Haitian businessman who was considered by the elite to be a traitor to his class, and the Catholic priest Jean-Marie Vincent. They were both assassinated in the mid-1990s for criticizing Haiti’s elite and the international community’s support for them over the interests of the poor majority.

Vincent referred to Haiti’s elite as predatory monopolists who have always resorted to violence and corruption as a means of maintaining the power and privilege of their class. Izmery urged the poor to create worker and consumer collectives to start their own businesses and challenge the power of the wealthy elite. Although much has changed since their murder, much has also largely remained the same.

FORMER PRIME Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis was forced to resign after the protests spread nationwide. How does this change the political landscape, and what impact will it have on the ground?

ALL BETS are off at this moment. There is great incertitude given that Haiti’s president René Préval, was elected to end the repression against former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s Lavalas movement.

Several elements of Aristide’s Lavalas movement were co-opted into the Alexis-Préval government. They are now left out in the cold. Remember that Préval and his Lespwa party never really had their own base of support for the election of 2006. The major support for Préval and Lespwa came from the same poor majority that elected Aristide in November 2000 and opposed his ouster in February 2004.

There has always been a tenuous compromise between the factions supported by the right and backed by the U.S., France and Canada, and these co-opted elements of Aristide’s movement. The government has been touted as a “coalition government,” which remained plausible as long as the international community is willing to buy and pay for Haiti’s political reality.

Following Aristide’s ouster, the United States, Canada and France–the real powers behind the coup–have made sure that Haiti can only continue to function as a state as long as they provide the funding. Every cabinet minister, every judge, every policeman and every member of a special presidential commission is on their payroll in one form or another.

I say this because Haiti’s ability to continue functioning as a state is not really based on its own tax base. It isn’t being paid for by Haitians in the interests of Haitians; it’s strictly determined by the international community based upon their priorities. What taxes are collected are used to service Haiti’s debt.

This is a largely a foreign-funded experiment in social engineering, led by so-called technical experts and non-governmental organizations that seek to reshape Haiti in their own image. The irony is that it is based on the fundamental belief that Haitians are incapable of running their own affairs, after having their house turned upside down by a foreign-sponsored coup in 2004.

For those who refused to be bought, this project is ultimately enforced by a foreign military occupation that is led by armies who have a history of political repression in their own countries, namely; Brazil, Chile and Argentina among others.

PRIOR TO the recent popular uprisings, there were massive protests in Haiti against the UN-backed occupation. What is the state of the anti-imperialist movement in Haiti, and what role does the left play in it?

SINCE THE ouster of Aristide in February 2004, there have been regular protests demanding his return. They have never stopped, and I venture to say they will never stop. Foremost is the fact that this is the only Haitian president to truly resist the international system that began with Ronald Reagan.

Another tenet of Reaganomics and U.S. foreign policy was that governments had to divest themselves of state-run companies and allow their elites along with foreign business partners to buy them up. We’ve all heard the famous allegations that Aristide was involved in corruption. Following the allegation, we have to ask why? I lived in Haiti during that period and was perhaps the only foreign journalist to focus on this question from the people’s perspective.

Aristide refused to privatize Haiti’s two largest industries owned by the state, the electric company EDH and the telephone company, Telecommunications d’Haiti or TELECO. Instead, Aristide took profits from both companies and invested them in a universal literacy program and feeding program for the poor. Any adult between the age of 30 and 60 could go to a free literacy class, modeled after the Cuban literacy system successfully used in Nicaragua.

In addition, there were what was called the “literacy restaurants.” At the height of the program, more than 2 million people per month received a hot meal, with more than 300,000 of them being children who were given vitamin supplements free of charge.

It was exactly this program that served as a safety net for the poor which was dismantled after Aristide’s ouster, and which could have served as a buffer to events in April 2008.

The international community and the UN have proved they have different priorities and a different model for development in Haiti. This is why their forces, despite the propaganda, are largely reviled among the poor in Haiti today.

Haiti’s poor majority has seen more than $2 billion pumped into the country over the past three years, and yet there has been no discernable alleviation of the poverty and misery they are forced to endure. It has been insult added to injury after having the right to choose a government not to the liking of the international community taken away from them in February 2004.

YOU HAVE written extensively on the brutal repression and destructive violence inflicted on poor neighborhoods by the occupying forces. The Brazilian military has played a leading role in this respect. What are some of the military tactics the Brazilians use to enforce the occupation?

THE BRAZILIAN military is by its own nature and history a repressive force. One need not look further then its own history to confirm this. The Brazilians serve much the same role they play in their own country to repress the favelas. The only difference is that they use Haiti to whitewash their own brutal historical image internationally.

In Haiti, the Brazilians always shoot first, and detain without cause or warrant. Yet they wash their hands of responsibility for arresting thousands of Haitians, most of them incarcerated for political reasons without ever seeing a judge.

The conditions in Haiti’s main penitentiary demand we work to free them by any means necessary. I’m serious–even if it means confronting the UN directly on the ground in Haiti. Prisoners in Haiti cannot be allowed to suffer under these conditions without a directed and durable response.

Most of the prisoners are there without seeing a judge for more than a year and remain imprisoned for their political beliefs. Otherwise, the burden of proof lies with Haiti’s occupation force–namely the United States and their surrogates such as Brazil.

RECENTLY, THE Economist and the head of the UN hailed the occupation of Haiti as a success story. But just like the U.S. occupation in Iraq, the opposite is the case. What do the world ruling elites mean when they say that the occupation has been a success?

I HAVE to use a benchmark to qualify your question. For me, the benchmark was the recent protests on February 29, 2008 that marked the fourth anniversary of Aristide’s ouster. More than 10,000 people took to the streets throughout Haiti to demand his return from exile.

Given your earlier questions, you might now begin to understand why. Haiti’s occupation after his ouster has been a complete failure. There has been no discernable improvement in the lot of the average Haitian–quite the contrary, their lot has descended into more poverty and misery.

Again, this is because the priority has shifted away from programs for the poor and a safety net for the most vulnerable to creating more business opportunities for the wealthy elite and their foreign partners.

WHAT CAN people in the U.S. and elsewhere do to support the resistance movement against the occupation?

I KNOW of projects on the ground that folks can support. The best alternative at this moment is the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund or HERF.

The most important act of solidarity is choosing whom you work with. They most closely reflect my own experiences and values for working in solidarity with grassroots organizations that are working to rebuild their lives following the ouster of Aristide and the brutal years of repression that followed. It is about creating an alternative to the NGO model of social engineering that allows for Haitians to lead in their own communities for sovereignty and economic and social justice.

Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Bolivia: Clinical Death for OAS

BY NIDIA DIAZ—Special for Granma International—

• HISTORY is full of events that later prove to be defining in the lives of peoples. The call made by Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa for the foundation of “an organization of Latin American states that does not lend itself to tutelage… and which includes countries of the region that have been absurdly excluded from international forums,” has put on the table what everyone has recognized: the clinical death of the Organization of American States (OAS) and its inevitable end. The call, supported this time by Mexican President Felipe Calderón, was made months ago by Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez Frias, and was received favorably by the Brazilian head of state, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, confirming the strategic vision of the Cuban revolutionary leadership which in the early 1960’s described the Organization of American States (OAS), as the Ministry of Yankee Colonies, which has nothing to do with Latin American interests or aspirations.
Examples abound as to the organization’s submissive and compromising behavior over the last 50 years, during which Washington, owner and master of the group, dictated the standards, demanded sanctions and banished those who opposed U.S. domination.
The OAS, for those who don’t remember, gave its blessing to invasions and violations of Latin American and Caribbean sovereignty, and held in high regard the main perpetrators of these actions under the guise of the hypocritical defense of a unilaterally imposed political model which sought to extend for all time the colonial and neocolonial past suffered by Latin Americans, which left the great majority excluded and marginalized. Up until recently, the uncompromising voice of Cuba was the only one heard accusing the group of disloyalty and ineffectiveness and warning of the dangerous control that U.S. imperialism exercised from its seat. The small island was not always heard and more than a few attributed its charges to its differences with the powerful northern neighbor.
The continent paid dearly for decades of neoliberalism, military dictatorships, governments that had “carnal” relations with the master – which occurred not only in Argentina – until the political, economic and social situation deteriorated to the point that the masses stepped forward to ensure the reemergence of a new wave of revolutionary, nationalist and anti-imperialist movements. Using the chipped and rusty weapons of representative democracy, they tore the traditional parties to shreds and have elected new political leaders who have assumed their mandates committed to the conquest of sovereignty and self-determination.
These representatives of the people have been responsible for Washington’s loss of control, little by little, of lives and land in this part of the world and have additionally contributed to the decline of U.S. influence within the OAS, despite its policy of blackmail.
Still fresh is the defeat suffered by the U.S. government in June of 2007, when the new iron lady, Condoleezza Rice, with no convincing arguments, was forced to leave the 37th General Assembly of the OAS without managing a happy ending to the show prepared by the White House to attack the Bolivarian Revolution when, using its constitutional prerogatives, the Venezuelan government did not renew the operating license of coup-supporting Radio Caracas Television (RCTV).
The previous year, during the OAS’ 36th session, the government of Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo had taken on Washington’s work, unsuccessfully promoting a condemnation of the Bolivarian Revolution and attempting to impose on the hemisphere’s agenda the issue of Venezuela’s supposed interference in expressing public support for the candidacy of the nationalist Ollanta Humala.
Without any doubt, these events contributed to the development of the current situation in which the ineffectiveness of the group is clear. It is an inadequate organization, incapable of facing the realities of the times, during which, as President Rafael Correa has said, “Ecuador has stopped being, forever, the backyard and branch office of a world power.” The same could be said for Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Brazil and others.
It was, therefore, clearer than ever before, when the Colombian army violated the territorial integrity of Ecuador with the complicity and support of U.S. intelligence services, that the new Latin America and Caribbean needs a new regional organization that will remove them, once and for all, from the impositions, control and interests of U.S. imperialism.
The solitary vote of the U.S. within the OAS in support of the Colombian attack on Ecuador was the moribund organization’s definitive fall into an irreversible coma and it opened the eyes of the few who still considered mere rhetoric the Bush doctrine of “preemptive war” and the willingness of the U.S. to attack any “dark corner of the world”, especially those where people have begun to say, “No, Mister.”
At such a transcendentally important moment and given the weakness shown by the OAS in the face of such interference and genocide, the Rio Group, meeting in a presidential summit in Santo Domingo, did not hesitate to express its solidarity with Ecuador and defend, with a united voice, the principles of self-determination and non-intervention, which are fundamental.
It is no accident that in Santo Domingo, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega advocated the creation of a new Organization of Latin American States, as his Ecuadorian counterpart had done days before, the embryonic form of which already exists within the Rio Group, a coordinating group forged in the 1980’s to oppose the interventionist policy of the Reagan administration.
According to Brazil, the proposed organization should not be limited to political issues, that equally necessary is the creation of a regional defense council, the objectives of which would be far removed from those of the Inter-American Defense Board, with its headquarters in Washington and through which different U.S. administrations have exercised, as another journalist has said, “harmful interference in Latin American armed forces, attempting to convert the aforementioned Board into a coup d’état, genocide and torture training ground for those in its service.” It is worth remembering that last March 21 a meeting took place between the Brazilian and U.S. defense departments during which the Brazilian minister made a comment to his U.S. counterpart, Robert Gates, on the South American defense initiative. Gates asked, “What can we do?” Nelson Jobim answered, “Stay out of the way.”
A memorable response that aptly portrays the new times. •

http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2008/abril/vier25/OAS.html

UN Soldiers Brutally Attack Haitian Street Vendors

ACTION ALERT FROM HAITI ACTION COMMITTEE

Protest brutal attack on Haitian street vendors by UN soldiers!

Bullet holes are visible in this photo from UN assault on Haitian street vendors

On Saturday, April 11th, a little past 3 p.m., a MINUSTAH (UN) soldier, Nigerian Cpl. Nagya Aminu, was shot and killed in downtown Port-au-Prince. While this killing was widely reported in the international media, what followed the killing was not.

In the immediate aftermath of the killing, at approximately 3:30 p.m. that same afternoon, MINUSTAH troops launched a massive assault on Haitian vendors at the open-air sidewalk market near the main Cathedral in downtown Port-au-Prince—the area where the soldier had been killed.

According to many different street vendors who directly witnessed the MINUSTAH assault, four or five MINUSTAH soldiers emerged from parked trucks near the market and began smashing up the property of street vendors, setting the market on fire, setting off tear gas, and shooting directly at unarmed vendors.

According to one vendor, MINUSTAH soldiers used flame throwers to torch the stalls. He said the soldiers also grabbed hammers and began destroying property. One vendor was hit in the head by MINUSTAH soldiers with these hammers. On April 17th, he showed a member of the Haiti Action Committee and other US human rights observers a massive wound to his head and a blood soaked shirt. He lost consciousness and was taken by a friend to the St. Joseph Hospital nearby.

Another vendor reported that he was shot in the leg by MINUSTAH soldiers and showed his wound to the delegation. He also showed his medical records from St. Joseph’s Hospital where he had gone to be treated.

Vendors spoke of people killed by MINUSTAH gun fire. According to an officer of the National Association of Vendors, at least three people were shot and killed by MINUSTAH soldiers, who allegedly zipped bodies into bags and took them away. Reportedly, the families could not locate the bodies in the local morgue. A different source indicated that more people may have been killed. The Vendors Association officer also stated that several hundred vendors may have lost their property in the raid.

The National Association for the Defense of Haitian Vendors and Consumers has filed a formal complaint asking the Haitian President to take action and secure compensation for the 263 Haitian vendors whose property was reportedly destroyed by the MINUSTAH troops. Members of the association provided our human rights delegation with a full listing of the names of these vendors, what property they lost, and how much it was valued. For many of these vendors, who live in dire poverty, the loss in property is truly devastating. Additionally, the Association provided us with a list naming seven people who were injured and two killed — Amonese Pierre and Anna Ainsi Connu — by the MINUSTAH troops.

This kind of massive assault by MINUSTAH troops on the civilian population has happened many times before, such as the notorious attack on the people of Cite Soleil on July 6th, 2005. It is time for the international human rights community to stand up in defense of the street vendors and the Haitian people.

Take action to demand that the MINUSTAH soldiers involved in this latest outrage are prosecuted for crimes against civilians.

MINUSTAH, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, was brought into Haiti by the UN in June 2004, several months after the U.S., Canada and France forced then-President Jean Bertrand Aristide out of office and into exile. Some 9,000 military and police officers from different countries are charged with keeping the peace, but have been accused by many of targeting Aristide supporters. More than 100 U.N. soldiers have been deported from Haiti, having been accused of sexual abuse. The June 2007-July 2008 budget for the UN operation in Haiti is $535 million.

Take action to demand that the street vendors receive full compensation for what they lost.

Contact:
UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH)
Tel: 011-509-244-0650/0660
FAX: 011-509-244-9366/67
Or, Fax Office of Secretary General (New York): 212-963-4879

President Rene Preval
Fax to 206-350-7986 (a US number) or email to avokahaiti@aol.com
Your letter will be hand-delivered to the Presidential Palace in Haiti.

Haitian Ministry of Justice
Tel: 011-509-245-0474

Contact Haiti Action Committee at www.haitisolidarity.net
More news & information at www.haitiaction.net

HAITI: Latortue Lacks Credibility for UN Post in Guinea

By Kevin Pina

On March 20, 2008, the United Nations announced that Gerard Latortue, the former Prime Minister of Haiti, was appointed to go to Guinea to conduct a social and political dialogue that will lead ultimately to national elections.

Many in Haiti question the choice of Latortue to broker a settlement in Guinea given his lack of democratic credentials and involvement in mass human rights abuses in Haiti.

Guinea background

In January 2007, in response to deteriorating living standards in Guinea caused by wholesale corruption by officials of the administration of President Lansana Conte, unions called a national strike. Massive numbers of Guineans demonstrated in the streets throughout Guinea and were met with brutal violence by Guinean police and military; on several occasions the police and military opened fire on crowds of unarmed demonstrators. While a final tally is not available, close to 1,000 marchers were killed and hundreds injured according to estimates on the ground.

Through a plan worked out in mediation between the government and the unions, a Prime Minister was appointed in March 2007, to oversee a dialogue by which the concerns of the people of Guinea would be reviewed and an investigation into the state-sponsored violence during the national strike would be pursued.

After a few months, it became apparent that the new Prime Minister of Guinea, Lansana Kouyate had lost the confidence of the people of Guinea and neither their concerns about living conditions nor the violence against the demonstrators would be addressed.

It was Lansana Kouyate who pushed the UN for Haiti’s former PM, Gerard Latortue, to broker a dialogue between so-called sectors of ‘civil society’ that would lead to new elections.

Lack of democratic credentials

There is absolutely nothing in Latortue’s history to indicate that he is qualified to broker an inclusive settlement in Guinea based upon democratic principles. Latortue became Prime Minister of Haiti through an extra-constitutional process where the U.S., France and Canada circumvented the law of the land. They appointed a so-called seven member Council of the Wise who in turn selected Latortue as Prime Minister following the ouster of Jean Bertrand Aristide on February 29, 2004. Nothing in Haiti’s constitution ever allowed for the empowerment of such a body or the process that led to his subsequent appointment. Haiti’s constitution calls for the Prime Minister to be appointed by a duly elected president and ratified by Haiti’s parliament to govern. He was selected to assume the office by virtue of foreign parties outside of the law and contrary to the popular democratic choice of the Haitian electorate.

CONTINUE:
http://haitiaction.net/News/HIP/4_8_8/4_8_8.html

Haiti Liberte: Guy Philippe Eludes Capture and Announces Candidacy

Haiti Liberte:GUY PHILIPPE ELUDES CAPTURE AND ANNOUNCES CANDIDACY
by Kim Ives

Four years ago, former "rebel" leader Guy Philippe stood on the balcony of
Haiti's former Army Headquarters and proclaimed: "I am chief. The military
chief. The country is in my hands."

Today, he is spends his time dodging capture by militarized teams dispatched
by the U.S. government, for which he was a key ally in the 2004 coup d'etat
against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

In the early morning hours of March 25, heavily armed commandos of the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) tried to arrest Philippe in the town
where he was born, but the accused drug smuggler escaped capture for the
second time in eight months.

About 50 DEA, FBI and Haitian anti-drug agents, masked and clad in black,
searched for the ex-police chief with a helicopter, four fast boats and a
dozen vehicles in the 1:00 a.m. raid on Philippe's home in Pestel, a
southern coastal town near Jeremie, local radios reported.

"They arrived in the middle of the night and they terrorized the population
with heavy detonations and stormed people's homes," the mayor of Pestel,
Lavillet Trezil, told Reuters in a telephone interview. "They handcuffed and
brutalized several people as they searched house after house to look for Guy
Philippe."

Trezil called the operation illegal. "Haiti is a sovereign country and as a
mayor I was never informed," he said.

Radio Kiskeya reported that Guy Philippe's brother, Dr Seneque Philippe, was
"severely molested" by the commandos, while a neighbor, Laplanche Joseph
Junior, was "lightly wounded" in the arm by a "projectile."

The Haitian National Police said the raid was a joint undertaking with U.S.
Government agencies. But Radio Kiskeya's correspondent said that the
commandos were exclusively North American with only one officer of the
Haitian Police's Office to Fight Drug Trafficking (BLTS) taking part in the
operation, as an interpreter.

Guy Philippe said later in an interview that the raid was carried out by the
FBI, not the DEA, and that "an adolescent, my brother, and a pregnant woman
were struck" during the three-hour operation.

The United Nations Mission to Stabilize Haiti (MINUSTAH), the foreign
military occupation force, says it played no role in the raid but was
informed about it shortly before at a high-level.

Last July 16, DEA and BLTS agents, dropping from five helicopters, tried to
arrest Philippe at his home in Bergeau, a village in the hills near the
southern city of Aux Cayes. Then as now, Philippe appears to have been
tipped off about the ambush.

Philippe, a 39-year-old former Haitian Army officer, police chief and
unsuccessful presidential candidate in 2006, denies the drug charges against
him. He was a leader of the so-called "rebels" who staged a brief
media-magnified takeover of Haiti's north during the U.S.-led campaign to
oust Aristide in 2004.

In a recent phone interview with Reuters from a hiding place, Philippe
claimed he was a victim of a plot by the United States and its allies to
eliminate him.

"They have a plan to kill me because I stood for the rights of my people,
not because I am involved in drug trafficking, because they know it is not
true," Philippe said on Feb. 29, his birthday.

"If they knew I was really a drug trafficker, they would have arrested me a
long time ago because I was always here [in Pestel] going about my
activities,” he said. “If I have to die, I will die with my head up, not
down, and with the dignity and courage of a fighter.”

Officials at the U.S. embassy in Port-au-Prince declined to comment on the
raid. The U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of Florida, where
media reports say a sealed indictment against Philippe has been brought,
also would not comment.

On March 27 , Philippe announced that he plans to run in upcoming Senate
elections.

“You don’t need to look hard for me because there are going to be
elections,” Philippe told Radio Vision 2000 in a telephone interview,
without, however, revealing his location. “I am going to be a candidate for
Senate.”

In an interview with the daily newspaper Le Nouvelliste, Philippe claimed
that he was freely circulating around the city of Jeremie. “Those guys don’t
scare us,” Philippe told the paper. “I consider myself already campaigning
for the next Senate elections. I am going to register like everyone when the
CEP [Provisional Electoral Council] announces the opening of registration.”

The elections for one-third of the Senate, originally scheduled for last
November, were postponed as the government launched an investigation into
corruption allegations against the former electoral council. A new date has
not been set.

Philippe ran for president in 2006 under his Front for National
Reconstruction or FRN (the same name he gave his band of “rebels”), which
hoped to reinstate the Haitian military disbanded by Aristide in 1995. He
received less than 1 percent of the vote.

Philippe told a Haitian radio show in October that he was the victim of a
political plot and he dared U.S. agents to kill him.

In a long interview with Peter Hallward published on Haitianalysis.com last
year, Philippe denounced his former confederates of the “unarmed opposition”
against Aristide, who provided him with material support. “I know that I
saved the country,” Philippe said. ” If it hadn’t been for the treachery of
our professional politicians, the people who signed an unpatriotic agreement
with France and the United States, then today the country would be in a much
better position. These people - [sweatshop magnate and Group of 184 leader]
Andy Apaid, [Alliance Party's] Evans Paul, [Organization of Struggling
People's] Paul Denis, [former Aristide and Preval ally turned de facto
regime facilitator] Lesley Voltaire - will be judged one day before the
tribunal of history.”

Having helped usher in the foreign occupation of Haiti and named Ronald
Reagan and Gen. Augusto Pinochet as his heroes in 2004, Philippe today
postures as a progressive nationalist who was betrayed by unpatriotic
opportunists. “Evans Paul, [Fusion Party's] Serge Gilles and the others were
aware of all my movements since we were working together,” he told Hallward.
“They asked [pro-coup Cap Haitien radio owner Jean-Robert] Lalanne to call
me, to ask me to come urgently to Port-au-Prince on 29 February [2004] to
have a big meeting to decide the future of Haiti; Apaid, [former Haitian
Army colonel Himmler] Rebu, Evans Paul, [former Haitian Army officer and
renegade Lavalas Family senator] Dany Toussaint were all at that meeting.
But under international pressure they then betrayed us and they signed the
tripartite accord on 4 March [2004], which decided on the procedure for
choosing a post-Aristide government. And it was them, and Andy Apaid, who
advised the US embassy to kidnap Aristide in order to prevent me, Guy
Philippe, from taking power and setting up a government in Haiti like the
one that [President Hugo] Chávez set up in Venezuela.”

When asked by Hallward if he had received any help from the U.S. and France
during the years he was organizing and outfitting his “rebels” in the
Dominican Republic from 2001 to 2004, Philippe became evasive. “There are
some things I cannot reveal at this point but everything’s in [my] book
which will appear in 2012, whether or not I myself am still alive,” he said.

APRIL 17 - 19, 2008:
HABNET TO HOLD NATIONAL CONFERENCE IN BROOKLYN

The Haitian-American Business Network (HABNET), a part of the Consortium for
Haitian Empowerment, will hold a three-day National Conference entitled
“Advancing the Haitian-American Agenda: Economic, Civic and Social
Strategies” from April 17 to 19, 2008.

The event is being organized in partnership with the Office of the Brooklyn
Borough President, Marty Markowitz.

The first day of the conference will feature a celebration of Toussaint
L’Ouverture’s legacy, and Nostrand Avenue will be given an alternate name:
Toussaint L’Ouverture Boulevard. On the second day, HABNET will have
workshops on small business support services, community organizing and
mobilizing, community services and development, the business and politics of
healthcare, wealth building and preservation, development projects and
investments in Haiti, education and workforce development, the business side
of arts and entertainment and more.

The first two events, the Toussaint L’Ouverture Business Awards and the
workshops on advancing the Haitian-American agenda, will take place at
Brooklyn Borough Hall, 209 Joralemon Street, on Thursday, April 17 from 6:00
p.m. to 8:00 p.m. and Friday, April 18 from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m..
respectively. The conference will end with an Awards Dinner Gala at Glen
Terrace, 5313 Avenue N in Brooklyn on Saturday, April 19 from 8:30 p.m. to
2:00 a.m.

Guest speakers and participants will include renowned human rights advocate
Marlene Bastien of Haitian Women of Miami; Dr. Carole Berotte Joseph, the
first Haitian provost (Boston); Jean Robert Lafortune, of the Grassroots
Movement (Miami); entertainers Melanie Charles (NY), Pauline Jean (NY) and
King Kino (NY). Entertainers Yole DeRose (Haiti) and Emeline Michel (NY)
will also have a CD signing.

Honorees will include Dr. Lesly Kernisant (NY), the founder of SYMACT and
Witnez Volcy (NY), recipient of the HABNET Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
Invitees include Wyclef Jean and Danny Glover. The Conference is supported
by local community leaders such as Elsie Accilien of HAUP, Gina Cheron of
CHE as well as elected officials.

Brooklyn has one of the largest concentrations of Haitian ancestry people
living in the United States, second only to Miami. Conference organizers say
they have designed the agenda to enable participants to advance a common
agenda by being informed of the economic, civic and social strategies that
will lead to the empowerment of Haitians, individually and collectively.

“When we come together with other groups to form a coalition that is
multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-national and multi-religious,
Haitian-Americans must not be the weak link in such a coalition,” said
Jackson Rockingster, HABNET’s chairman. “Therefore, it is incumbent upon us
to build strong economic, civic and social institutions. This conference
will contribute to that endeavor. Everyone is encouraged to attend. Everyone
is welcome. We must educate ourselves to participate in the civic and
economic life or our community in order to elevate ourselves to a state of
empowerment.”

For more information, contact Gracie Xavier at 877-278-9143 or Fritz
Clairvil 347-996-3245.

All articles copyrighted Haiti Liberte. REPRINTS ENCOURAGED.
Please credit Haiti Liberte.

Colombian Troops Kill Farmers, Dress Them as Rebels, Collect their Bounty

The US is putting on a full-court press to get Congress to pass a Free Trade Agreement with Colombia and is stressing Colombia’s improved human rights record as a good reason to do so.

Colombian Troops Kill Farmers, Pass Off Bodies as Rebels’

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, March 30, 2008; A12

SAN FRANCISCO, Colombia — All Cruz Elena González saw when the soldiers came past her house was a corpse, wrapped in a tarp and strapped to a mule. A guerrilla killed in combat, soldiers muttered, as they trudged past her meek home in this town in northwestern Colombia.

She soon learned that the body belonged to her 16-year-old son, Robeiro Valencia, and that soldiers had classified him as a guerrilla killed in combat, a claim later discredited by the local government human rights ombudsman. “Imagine what I felt when my other son told me it was Robeiro,” González said in recounting the August killing. “He was my boy.”

Funded in part by the Bush administration, a six-year military offensive has helped the government here wrest back territory once controlled by guerrillas and kill hundreds of rebels in recent months, including two top commanders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

But under intense pressure from Colombian military commanders to register combat kills, the army has in recent years also increasingly been killing poor farmers and passing them off as rebels slain in combat, government officials and human rights groups say. The tactic has touched off a fierce debate in the Defense Ministry between tradition-bound generals who favor an aggressive campaign that centers on body counts and reformers who say the army needs to develop other yardsticks to measure battlefield success.

The killings, carried out by combat units under the orders of regional commanders, have always been a problem in the shadowy, 44-year-old conflict here — one that pits the army against a peasant-based rebel movement.

But with the recent demobilization of thousands of paramilitary fighters, many of whom operated death squads to wipe out rebels, army killings of civilians have grown markedly since 2004, according to rights groups, U.N. investigators and the government’s internal affairs agency. The spike has come during a military buildup that has seen the armed forces nearly double to 270,000 members in the last six years, becoming the second-largest military in Latin America.

There are varying accounts on the number of registered extrajudicial killings, as the civilian deaths are called. But a report by a coalition of 187 human rights groups said there are allegations that between mid-2002 and mid-2007, 955 civilians were killed and classified as guerrillas fallen in combat — a 65 percent increase over the previous five years, when 577 civilians were reported killed by troops.

“We used to see this as isolated, as a military patrol that lost control,” said Bayron Gongora of the Judicial Freedom Corp., a Medellin lawyers group representing the families of 110 people killed in murky circumstances. “But what we’re now seeing is systematic.”

The victims are the marginalized in Colombia’s highly stratified society. Most, like Robeiro Valencia, are subsistence farmers. Others are poor Colombians kidnapped off the streets of bustling Medellin, the capital of this state, Antioquia, which has registered the most killings.

Amparo Bermudez Dávila said her son, Diego Castañeda, 27, disappeared from Medellin in January 2006. Two months later, authorities called to say he had been killed, another battlefield death. They showed her a photograph of his body, dressed in camouflage.

“I said, ‘Guerrilla?’ ” she recalled. “My son was not a guerrilla. And they told me if I didn’t think he was a guerrilla, then I should file a complaint.”

Military prosecutors ordinarily initiate investigations when the army kills someone. In cases that appear criminal, civilian prosecutors take over, as they did in the slayings of Valencia and Castañeda in San Francisco. But human rights groups and government prosecutors say the initial probes have usually been perfunctory, and investigators have been under intense pressure from high-ranking military officers to rule in the army’s favor.

Such challenges have made tabulating the exact number of dead civilians impossible, though officials at the attorney general’s office and the inspector general’s office revealed recent estimates in interviews.

The attorney general’s office is investigating 525 killings of civilians, all but a handful of which occurred since 2002 and in which 706 soldiers and officers are implicated. The office has another 500 cases, involving hundreds more victims, yet to be opened. The inspector general’s office, meanwhile, is investigating 650 cases from 2003 to mid-2007 that could involve as many as 1,000 victims, said Carlos Arturo Gomez, the vice inspector general.

“Last year, the number of complaints shot up,” Gomez said. “Some have said the cause could be unscrupulous military members who want to show results from false operations. Others say it’s the product of pressure from the high command, the push for results.”

The trend has prompted concern among some members of the U.S. Congress. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations foreign operations subcommittee, said he is holding up $23 million in military aid until he sees progress in the fight against impunity and state-sponsored violence.

“We’ve had six years, $5 billion in U.S. aid. More than half of it has gone to the Colombian military, and we find the army is killing more civilians, not less,” Leahy said in an interview. “And by all accounts, all independent accounts, we find that civilians are just being taken out, executed and then dressed up in uniforms so they can claim body counts of guerrillas killed.”

President Álvaro Uribe’s government, which has had a string of recent successes against the FARC, has defended itself against the accusations and contends they are part of an international campaign designed to discredit the armed forces. Indeed, some officials say the FARC is prodding the families of rebels killed in combat to claim the dead were civilians.

Still, Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos acknowledges civilian deaths and has initiated steps that include new rules of engagement, assigning inspectors to combat units to advise commanders on the use of force and improving human rights training for soldiers.

The military has also been streamlining its justice system and transferring more cases to the attorney general’s office, which the United Nations says must have a greater role if extrajudicial executions are to be eradicated. The attorney general’s office said more than 200 members of the military have been detained as prosecutors investigate their involvement in the killings of civilians, with 13 convicted last year.

“I have said this very clearly: The soldier who commits a crime becomes a criminal, and he will be treated as a criminal,” Santos said.

Santos also has stressed, in speeches and directives, that the army’s anti-guerrilla policy should be more focused on generating desertions than accumulating combat kills, the traditional method of measuring success. “I’ve told all my soldiers and policemen that I prefer a demobilized guerrilla, or a captured guerrilla, to a dead guerrilla,” Santos said.

But the Defense Ministry’s reformers have been met by influential generals who have defended officers accused of slayings and favor a more traditional strategy for defeating the rebels.

That approach means giving field commanders autonomy and instilling a philosophy that stresses swift engagement with the rebels.

“What’s the result of offensives? Combat,” Gen. Mario Montoya, head of Colombia’s army, said in an interview. “And if there’s combat, there are dead in combat.”

Human rights groups see a disturbing trend, saying the tactics used by some army units are similar to those that death squads used to terrorize civilians. A top U.N. investigator said some army units went as far as to carry “kits,” which included grenades and pistols that could be planted next to bodies.

“The method of killing people perceived as guerrilla collaborators is still seen as legitimate by too many members of the army,” said Lisa Haugaard, director of Latin America Working Group, a Washington-based coalition of humanitarian groups.

After she interviewed a number of families of victims, she determined that in many of the cases soldiers “appeared to be going on missions, not accidentally detaining and killing people,” she said.

The highest-ranking officer implicated in extrajudicial killings is Col. Hernan Mejía.

A former army sergeant who was under Mejía’s command, Edwin Guzman, recounted in an interview how Mejía’s unit would kill peasant farmers, dress them in combat fatigues and call in local newspaper reporters to write about the supposed combat that had taken place.

Guzman, now a government witness against Mejía, said soldiers participated because they knew the army gave incentives — from extra pay to days off — for amassing kills in combat. “This is because the army gives prizes for kills, not for control of territory,” he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20…

HAITI: The DEA Hunts for Guy Philippe Again! US, Is This Any Way to Treat the Guy Who Did Your Dirty Work?

Guy Philippe was one of two primary leaders of a paramilitary group that the US housed, trained and armed in the Dominican Republic to make cross-border attacks into Haiti beginning in 2002 in order to kill their countrymen aligned with the administration of the democratically-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Last year, he started shooting his mouth off about which elite members of Haitian society helped finance the coup. Before long, the DEA engaged in a dramatic hunt looking for Philippe and came up empty-handed.

Perhaps, anticipating his announcement that he plans to run for the Haitian Senate, the DEA is after him again. The issue is that Philippe knows way too much about the US involvement in the coup and especially about that of a diplomat who used to be at the US embassy in Port-au-Prince. Philippe must be contained and the best way to do that is drive him underground. Arresting him is tricky because the US doesn’t want him in court talking either. So the pretend pursuit of Philippe continues and soon you may be able to call the guy with the most blood on his hands from the 2004 coup — Senator Philippe.

Former Haitian rebel sought by US for drug trafficking says he will run for Senate

The Associated Press

Thursday, March 27, 2008

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti: A former Haitian rebel wanted by the U.S. on drug-trafficking charges said Thursday that he plans to run for Senate.Guy Philippe, whose rebel band helped topple President Jean-Bertrand Aristide during a 2004 revolt, has been in hiding since U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents and Haitian police raided his home in July.“You don’t need to look hard for me because there are going to be elections,” Philippe told Radio Vision 2000 in a telephone interview — without revealing his location. “I am going to be a candidate for Senate.”The legislative elections, originally scheduled for last November, were postponed as Haiti launched an investigation into fraud allegations at its electoral council. A new date has not been set.The former soldier ran for president in 2006 under his Front for National Reconstruction Party, which hoped to reinstate the notorious Haitian military disbanded by Aristide.Philippe, who has been named in a sealed indictment in the U.S. state of Florida, evaded arrest during the DEA raid last summer. But local radio reported that foreign, English-speaking agents went looking for Philippe at his home in southern Haiti again on Tuesday.In the radio interview, he accused the U.S. of fabricating allegations against him.

“Before when they wanted you they said you were a communist. Now they say you’re a drug trafficker.”

Philippe told a local radio show in October that he was the victim of a political plot and he dared U.S. agents to kill him.

VENEZUELA: Wash Post’s Diehl Gets a Long-Deserved Dressing Down from Chavez’ Communications Minister

Below is a letter from Venezuela’s Communications Minister, Andres Izarra, to Jackson Diehl, an editor at the Washington Post. Diehl has been responsible for some of the most vicious disinformation about President Chavez produced by any newspaper in the US. Hats off to Minister Izarra!

See Related article: “Washington Post’s Obsession with Chavez”

Letter from Venezuela’s Communications Minister to the Washington Post

March 26th 2008, by Andrés Izarra
Jackson Diehl
Deputy Editor, Editorial Page
The Washington Post
1150 15th Street NW
Washington, DC 20071
March 25, 2008

Dear Mr. Diehl,

Over the past several years, we have informed you of our concerns regarding the hostile, distorted and inaccurate coverage of Venezuela in your newspaper, and particularly on the Editorial Page. Previously, we communicated our alarm at the unbalanced reporting and writing on Venezuela during the period 2000-2006, which evidenced one-sided analyses and false claims regarding President Chávez’s tendencies and events within the country. Since then, however, the Post coverage has gotten worse. More editorials and OpEds have been written this past year about Venezuela than ever before, 98% of which are negative, critical, and aggressive and contain false or manipulated information. We are therefore led to believe that the Washington Post is promoting an anti-Venezuela, anti-Chávez agenda.

President Chávez has been referred to in Washington Post editorials and OpEds during the past year as a “strongman”, “crude populist”, “autocrat”, “clownish”, “increasingly erratic”, “despot” and “dictator” on 8 separate occasions and his government has been referred to 7 times as a “dictatorship”, a “repressive regime” or a form of “authoritarianism”. Such claims are not only false, but they are also extremely dangerous. The U.S. government has used such classifications to justify wars, military interventions, coup d’etats and other regime change techniques over the past several decades.

Far from a dictatorship, President Chávez’s government has the highest popularity rating in the Venezuela’s contemporary history and Chávez has won three presidential elections with landslide victories and several other important elections, including a recall referendum against his mandate in August 2004, which he won with a clear 60-40 majority. Hugo Chávez is the first president in Venezuela’s history to include the country’s majority poor population in key decision and policy-making. The creation of community councils that govern locally and the increase in voter participation are clear signs of a vibrant, open democracy, demonstrating that Venezuela is far from a dictatorship.

The Editorial Page inaccuracies and distortions extend beyond the mere labeling of President Chávez. On more than 11 occasions, editorials and OpEds have falsely claimed that President Chávez “controls the courts and the television media”. Venezuela has five branches of government - all of which are autonomous from one other by Constitutional mandate: the Executive, the Legislative, the Judiciary, the Electoral and the People’s Power. Unlike the United States, which allows for the Executive to appoint supreme court justices, in Venezuela, the high court magistrates are determined through a selection process and a vote in the National Assembly. The Executive branch in Venezuela plays no role in the assignment of judges to the courts. Communications media in Venezuela continues to be majority controlled by the private sector, despite what the Post Editorial Page claims.

Post editorials and OpEds also erroneously referred to the constitutional reform package last December on more than 8 occasions as enabling President Chávez to “rule indefinitely” or become a “de facto president-for-life”. The Constitutional reform did seek to abolish term limits, but not elections. Venezuelans would still have the right and duty to nominate candidates and vote for them in transparent electoral processes. Interestingly, the Post made no similar accusations against President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia when he twice made moves to change constitutional law to permit reelection to a second term. Uribe succeded in 2004 and is now again seeking to amend that law so he can run for a third term. Where are the Post’s cries about dictatorship and de facto president-for-life in Colombia?

The Post has also severely manipulated and outrighted censored information about economic growth in Venezuela. Twice, recent publications on the editorial page described the Venezuelan government economic measures as “disastrous, crackpot economic policies”. Under Chávez’s economic policies, extreme poverty has diminished to an all-time low of 9.4% (2007) from a high of 42.5% in 1996. Unemployment has been reduced to 6.9% (2007) from 16.6% in 1998. Minimum wage has been raised substantially during the Chávez government to become one of the highest in the developing world, and there has been a significant reduction in Venezuela’s public debt. Chávez also paid off Venezuela’s loans to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund and has increased investment in the nation’s agricultural production industry.

Nevertheless, the Post fails to reflect any of these positive, progressive advances in its coverage and statements on Venezuela. Instead, Post editorials are dedicated to accusing President Chávez of engaging in an “arms race” (4 occasions), “violating human rights” (3 times), “facilitating/endorsing drug-trafficking” (6 times) and “promoting an anti-American agenda” (6 times). Worst of all, despite Chávez’s own statements to the contrary, the Post continues to perpetuate the dangerous myth that Chávez is an “anti-semite” “aligned with terrorist nations or groups” (9 times).

Mr. Diehl, you should certainly know that the United States is currently waging an international war against terrorism. Within that framework, the Bush administration has clearly stated that those nations associated with or friendly to terrorist states or groups can be subject to preemptive invasion or intervention. Are you seeking such an end in Venezuela?

Your editorial on February 15, 2008, “Mr. Chávez’s Bluff”, goes one step too far. The piece is an outright call for a boycott of Venezuelan oil, an act that would irreparably harm both the peoples of Venezuela and the United States. As the Post applauds the mafia tactics of one of the world’s wealthiest corporations, ExxonMobil, it’s evident that its allegiance lies with corporate profits over people’s rights.

And your latest editorial on March 5, 2008, “Allies of Terrorism” is well beyond a mere criticism of President Chávez’s policies; it’s a direct threat to the people of Venezuela. By accepting at face value - with absolutely no investigation or verification - the documents alleged to have been found on a computer belonging to Rául Reyes from the FARC, the Post recklessly condemns both Venezuela and Ecuador as nations that promote and harbor terrorism and justifies the most violating, reviled and dangerous Bush doctrine of modern times: Preventive War. By comparing Colombia’s violation of Ecuador’s sovereignty to a US attack against al-Qaeda, the Post shamelessly validates the most irrational war in history and calls for its expansion into Latin America. We find the Post’s defense of the violation of Ecuador’s sovereignty and its satisfaction with such aggressive - and illegal - tactics, together with the warning that Venezuela is in “danger”, extremely disturbing.

We are outraged with the Washington Post’s editorial coverage of Venezuela. The Post was once the bastion of genuine investigative reporting and truth-seeking. Those days are well gone and the Washington Post has now become nothing more than a tabloid serving special interests. The noble principles Eugene Meyer envisioned for the Washington Post in 1935, including “telling the truth as nearly as the truth can be ascertained”, “telling ALL the truth so far as it can be learned, concerning the important affairs of America and the world and “the newspaper shall not be the ally of any special interest, but shall be fair and free and wholesome in its outlook on public affairs and public persons,” have been violated by editors like you, Mr. Diehl, who have chosen to promote a harmful personal agenda instead of ensure the ongoing greatness of your newspaper.

Sincerely,

Andrés Izarra
Journalist
Minister of Communication and Information
Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
Source URL: http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/
Printed: March 26th 2008

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/print/3303

HAITI: The Benefits of a Weak State

This is an excellent and comprehensive summary of the “weak state” prescription that the international community has been administering to Haiti for years. Now, Haiti is more sick than ever. Darren Ell is right — the only way this will stop is for the citizens of US, France, and Canada to learn what their countries are doing in Haiti and to mobilize against it.

Haiti: The Benefits of a Weak State

By Darren Ell

HIP Special Report - Darren Ell is a photojournalist from Montreal, Canada who contributes to the Haiti Information Project (HIP). His previous work, interviews with Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, Mario Joseph, and Brian Concannon Jr., focused on the violation of civil and political rights following the 2004 coup d’état. This article looks at the international community’s violation of the social and economic rights of Haitians. His photographic work on the impact of the 2004 coup d’état will be presented in a public exhibition in Montreal in the last two weeks of September 2008.

This article assumes that Western nations have an option. In the past, they invested in their own people in the midst of economic depression; they rebuilt the economies of entire nations following World War II; they now have unprecedented resources to invest elsewhere. Instead, their governments and the international financial institutions they control are bankrupting countries like Haiti in order to satisfy the selfish interests of a tiny foreign and domestic business elite. A key tactic in their policies is to weaken foreign central governments. As Peter Hallward states in Damming the Flood, the most comprehensive book written about recent Haitian history, “both the domestic elite and its foreign patrons have a vested interest in the weakness of the state and the instability of its government. A weak government means minimal taxes or tariffs, minimal regulations, minimal interference in the exploitation of labor, trade or contraband”

And so it has gone for all progressive governments in Haiti since 1990: dramatic reductions in foreign aid have been used to cripple the government’s ability to deliver on its promises; aid has been taken from the government and given to foreign NGO’s; forced tariff reductions have ruined indigenous economic activity, driven up unemployment and destroyed Haiti’s tax base; and coup d’états have been financed whenever governments have tried to collect corporate taxes, raise the minimum wage or implement desperately needed social spending. Aside from local business elites and their foreign partners, the only other group to benefit from the pillage has been foreign NGO’s who are now in charge of “developing” the country, the government lacking the resources to do it itself. This, in a nutshell, has been the international community’s vision for Haiti since Haitians sacrificed their lives throwing off dictatorship: destroy local economic competition, weaken the state, then send in charities and NGO’s to pick up the pieces.

The Government of Haiti has conveniently been blamed for the country’s problems. Canada even claimed that the International Community had to protect Haiti from its own democratically elected government in 2004. Meanwhile, Canada - whose citizens enjoy world-class government-subsidized transportation, education, health care and social security - had been working to undermine the state apparatus in Haiti since 2000. Whatever mistakes elected Haitian governments may have made since 1990, they pale in comparison to the wrecking ball unleashed on them by foreign powers. As political activist and member of Haiti’s Sovereignty Commission Patrick Elie recently stated: “Every progressive government in Haiti since 1990 has found itself in the position of trying to fix a collapsing house while assassins are trying to break down the back door. People looking at the house later blame the government, but it was busy the whole time keeping the assassins – you guys – from breaking in with your machine guns. People always leave out that part – the constant aggression, the constant sabotage.”

How cash-starved is the government of Haiti? In 2000, ten years of sabotage had left the Aristide government with a miniscule $600 million budget, half of it derived directly from foreign aid. After the US and Canada cut aid or diverted it away from the government into NGO’s, Hallward points out that “the total government budget was reduced to the risible sum of just $300 million. To put this in context, this amount is roughly equal to the municipal budget of a small US city with around 100,000 inhabitants.” Note that the $300 million also had to cover “the annual $60 million payment on the national debt, 45% of which was incurred by the Duvalier dictatorships.” In other words, while the municipal government of a US city had $3,000 to spend on each of its 100,000 citizens, Aristide had $29 to spend on each of his 8.5 million citizens. As Canadian freelance journalist Anthony Fenton has shown, Canadian policy dovetailed with US policy, and aid skyrocketed as soon as the popular progressive Fanmi Lavals (FL) regime was overthrown in 2004 and Gerard Latortue’s “interim government” began murdering and jailing thousands of FL supporters. What’s more, unlike Lavalas governments, which had a consistent record of investing in social and material infrastructure of the country, Latortue weakened the state’s influence by bringing constructive investment to a full stop, cancelling literacy, land reform and subsidized meal programs, the collection of corporate taxes, price controls and import regulations, and firing thousands of public sector workers. Today, in 2008, the UN spends the equivalent of twice Haiti’s national budget policing frustrated unemployed Haitians.

What does a weak state mean for the people of Haiti? Let’s start with people who in Canada or the US would belong to the “middle class”? A part-time teacher in Port-au-Prince told me he was deciding which of his children had to miss a year of school because he couldn’t afford the fees; a man from Cap Haitian with diplomas in French and Economics had been looking for employment for 2 years and was living off his parents; full-time hospital workers in Port-au-Prince were complaining about not being paid for four months; the teachers in a Pétionville school expressed their relief that a foreign donor had come through with their unpaid $112 a month salaries; the leader of a Haitian national union organization said he occasionally pockets $300 a month, but was putting his children through school thanks to his wife’s job; a former member of the Haitian Parliament, illegally imprisoned for three years, stated that he lost his possessions in 2004 when anti-Lavalas thugs ransacked his home, and that he has not found work since his release from jail; unionized dock workers in Port au Prince said that after 15 years of struggle they negotiated one of the most lucrative agreements in Haiti: $440 a month salaries. However, their achievement was about to be crippled by a mass firing: 70% of Port-au-Prince’s 1,300 dock workers are about to lose their jobs in a privatization scheme.
Left: In the burning garbage dump of Fort Dimanche, a man shakes amagenta computer printer roller free of its ink so he sell the roller in a local scrap market. Right: A young boy in the Cap Haitian slum of Shada stands amid the fetid water where he just defecated. Behind him stands a community latrine which drains into the water. 01

None of these people could guarantee that their children would finish high school. 96% of Haitian children never do. Yet they are the lucky ones, being employed and earning more than the minimum wage, which sits at $2 a day. For the 70% of Haitians who have no employment at all, life is a matter of survival. At the back of the Cap Haitien slum, Shada, I met a woman sitting despondent outside her home which was situated next to a 2,500 square meter pile of toxic trash. She had four children under the age of 7. Her sons had light colored hair, a sign of the chronic malnutrition gnawing away at a quarter of all Haitian children. Her husband had left her and she was living off handouts from community members. Around the corner, another woman sat with three young children, her breastfeeding son bathed in a terrible sweat, his face covered with sores and his hair showing signs of malnutrition. A 26-year-old man named Wilfrid was repairing a metal cooking pan. Poverty forced him from school in grade 3. He said he was suffering from terrible chronic headaches. He was depressed and despondent , never looked at us, and didn’t know how much he earned by repairing pans. Twenty meters from his home, a young boy was defecating in the middle of a pool of garbage, next to a community latrine that drained into the water beside him. I was told one of the principle occupations of men in Shada is pushing a wheelbarrow, backbreaking work that nets them 50 cents a day, enough to buy one cup of rice. Men who don’t work stay home and sleep, depressed. People here eat a full meal every second day.

Citizens in the developed nations who are undermining Haiti’s government are protected against this scale of insecurity by publicly funded programs: unemployment insurance, welfare, and pension plans. Not so in Haiti. Some support comes from the diaspora whose remittances account for 30% of Haiti’s GDP, but state support is minimal. Even the private sector has little to offer: staff at Haiti’s largest private pension plan company, the Office National d’Assurance Vieillesse, told me that 60% of Haitians have no social security whatsoever, and that the most lucrative retirement package they offer is $42 a month. They acknowledge that not working in Haiti is a sentence to misery. This economic insecurity is taking a toll on people’s health. Eating two meals or less a day is the norm even for the employed of Haiti. There are hollow-eyed youth and adults throughout the country. Children in school have difficulty concentrating because of inadequate nourishment. One rarely sees an elderly person in Haiti (the average lifespan is 53 years). Haitians who have travelled to Canada described their astonishment at how many elderly people they see there.

They are probably equally surprised by the quality of public health care from which Canadians benefit. Marie Michelle Jean-Baptiste, head of a new health care worker’s union in Port au Prince, explained that the General Hospital (Hôpital de l’Université de l’État) is one of only two functioning public hospitals in the capital. Everything else in the city aside from the Tuberculosis sanatorium is private. Because of a lack of resources, the General Hospital provides only basic consultations, medications and lab work, a few x-rays, and essential surgery. All other services – medications, x-rays, lab tests, ultrasounds, major surgeries and so forth are run through the multitude of private clinics and pharmacies that line the streets surrounding the hospital in every direction as far as the eye can see. Very few Haitians can afford to eat regularly and health care has become a luxury only the wealthy few can afford.

The hospital staff copes with low or unpaid salaries, random firings and serious material shortfalls. The hospital’s two public ambulances, donations from Taiwan, have been broken down since mid-2005 with no new funds to repair them. By contrast, ten new Red Cross ambulances paraded through the crowds of the recent Carnaval festivities. Because of material shortages, the hospital laboratory is able to provide basic tests only: essential blood, urine, and faeces analysis. Anything else has to be paid for in private clinics. The hospital’s only ultrasound machine is broken. Since the spring of 2005, there has been no food service for patients in the hospital. Missionaries provide this service. Numerous sources confirmed that doctors have been robbing the hospital of its instruments and most prized technology in order to establish and maintain their own private clinics. Part of the problem, Marie Michelle Jean-Baptiste tells me, is that the state only pays doctors $420 a month.

The hospital pharmacy, intended to provide subsidized medications to Haitians, has been gutted and closed for 18 months. The sign lies broken in the yard. The medications room has a small number of drugs on half-empty shelves. The radiology department is no different. A frustrated technician pointed out that only one of the hospital’s five x-ray machines is functional. A second x-ray machine donated by Japan has been broken for a year and no one is able to repair it. A third machine is broken down sitting in a dusty room. A fourth lays broken on the floor in a hallway. One x-ray room is empty, apparently once containing a machine stolen by the director of the department for his private clinic. In other words, the radiology department is one breakdown away from being irrelevant. Unfortunately for the public, x-ray services in the private sector, like all other services, cost 4 to 5 times what they do in the General Hospital.

Numerous sources confirmed that Haitians have a habit of only consulting the “health care system” when they are desperate, when their illnesses are life-threatening or holding them back from functioning in society. Usually they stop after the consultation, unable to afford medications or surgeries. This partly explains the multitude of terrible ailments one sees in Haiti as well as the 53-year lifespan of Haitians
26 out a total of 31 students from Cap Haitian that had been sent home from school in January 2008 because their parents couldn’t afford school fees. Madame Bwa, the community activist fighting for them, estimates a third of children in her community never go to school at all.

The state of Haitian education is equally troubling. Patrick Elie points out that 85% of Haitian schools are private and cost four to five times as much as public schools. A case in point is Haiti’s second largest city, Cap Haitian. With a population of over 500,000, children there only have access to 2 publicly-funded high schools. The rest are private. Students stop and start school constantly, depending on their parents’ ability to pay. It is common to meet 20-year-olds in grade 8 and 12-year-olds in grade 3. When I visited the Cap Haitien slum of Shada, a community activist presented me with a list of 31 students ranging in age from 4 to 18 who had been sent home from school in the previous two weeks because their parents were unable to pay their school fees. Many students are inadequately nourished and can’t concentrate. Almost no one can afford glasses in Haiti, so many students can’t read what’s on the blackboard. Many can’t afford notebooks or pencils. Because of a lack of curricular resources, teachers often resort of rote strategies. Patrick Elie notes that regulation – a key function of a healthy government – is virtually absent in Haiti’s education system: “The state doesn’t impose rules on schools. There is no regulation regarding the number of students in a class, nothing about student evaluation, teacher qualifications or curriculum. People send their kids to schools run by a French organization and their exams are graded in France, not Haiti. You can open a two-room building with one teacher and call it a university. You can call anything an ‘institute.’ Nobody will come and look at what you’re doing.”
Clockwise from top left: (1) a bus company mechanic has to verify every bolt on every wheel after each 10 mile return trip from Lestere to Gonaives. He stated that at lease one bolt was always bent or broken. (2) The road is so rough that vehicules veer toward a smooth narrow corridor on the side of the route. (3) Trucks regularly break down on the road. The driver of this truck had already spent 24 hours trying to repair the broken bolts on his wheel. 8 women were traveling with their produce in the back of the truck. They had missed a day at the market and were concerned their produce would spoil. (4) The 4-6 inch rocks that litter the road. 03

Transportation is another area where strong state support is desperately needed. The foreign officials that bankrupted the Haitian government and killed, jailed or exiled its best minds should try riding a bus in Haiti. The rocky 10-mile stretch between Gonaives and Lestere splits tires, cracks axles, bends and breaks wheel bolts. Drivers and passengers stop talking and brace themselves for a 30-minute vertebrae-jarring gift from the international community. Passengers are injured by falling luggage. In the mountains, buses stuffed with 100 human beings weave around 6-foot-wide 2-foot-deep potholes, on a road without guardrails that lurches around 1000-foot ravines. According to Fortuné Patrice, head of the APCH, a Haitian trucker’s union, navigating these exhausting treacherous roads will net a Haitian driver anywhere between $2 and $12 for a day’s work. He also points out that the Haitian government can’t afford bus stations, so buses stop along the road, while passengers young and old have to urinate and defecate along the highway or in the streets of the cities.

People shouldn’t live like this. The current economic model forced on Haiti – minimal taxes or tariffs, an anaemic state forced to service crippling odious debt while 80% of its health, education, food and water services are run by non-Haitian organizations – has failed. It has left Haitians hungry, deprived of education, health care and the dignified living conditions to which they have a right. Despite Haiti’s cash-starved government, despite the country being one of the most privatized nations on earth, the mantra chanted by the powers financing Haiti’s coup d’états has been “privatization.” The only way more privatization can make sense in Haiti is if 8.5 million human beings are removed from the equation. Nonetheless, in February 2008, Paul Chéry, the head of the Confédération des Travailleurs haitiens, stated that Haiti’s once public telephone company, Teleco, was about to fire 800 employees.

People from privileged countries are both reviled and moved by the poverty of Haiti. They often open their wallets to support an NGO or a charity. I have done so myself because the needs are pressing. Ultimately however, this is not the best thing foreigners can do for Haiti. It is Haitian institutions that need strengthening, not foreign ones. However, twice since 1990, America, and later Canada and France shattered elected Haitian governments whose programs their own people would have supported at home. Thousands of Haiti’s most talented people were exiled, jailed or murdered. That the nations responsible for this got away with it is a sign of failure in democracy abroad, not in Haiti. Haitians have thrown off dictatorship and built a resilient progressive democratic movement capable of inspiring populations around the world. On the other hand, American, French and Canadian populations remain oblivious to what their governments are doing in Haiti. They also remain unaware that the same business philosophy working to keep Haiti’s government weak has powerful disciples in their own countries, pushing to privatize everything belonging to the collective.

The United Nations Development Program has stated that “Haiti will need more than 50 years or the equivalent of two generations to recover from its current state if the process of recovery were to start now.” Haitians know they need economic assistance to rebuild their country. While the current economic model forced on them is a failure, wealthy nations have at their disposal the capacity to help Haiti turn the corner. They also control the policies that keep Haiti in economic dependence. Policies will be changed and adequate support channelled properly when the citizens of donor nations learn what their own governments are doing, then mobilize to force a change in their destructive foreign policies.

(go to the original to view article with photos: http://www.haitiaction.net/News/HIP/3_22_8/3_22_8.html)©2008 Haiti Information Project - All Rights Reserved

The Haiti Information Project (HIP) is a non-profit alternative news service providing coverage and analysis of breaking developments in Haiti.

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