Haiti and the hidden hand of Washington

Haiti - A coup regime, human rights abuses and the hidden hand of Washington

"Ben Terrall examines Haiti’s coup regime, human rights abuses, the sham of planned elections and the complicity of Washington on a military and diplomatic level. It’s a situation that [has] important implications for the African diaspora."

"In a June 2005 Jamaica Observer column about the significance of the Haitian revolution, John Maxwell wrote, “the slaves of Saint Dominique, the world’s richest colony, rose up, abolished slavery and chased the slavemasters away.” Maxwell, one of the more astute journalists covering US foreign policy, added, “Unfortunately for them, they did not chase all of the slavemasters away, and out of the spawn of those arose in Haiti a small group of rich, light-skinned people – the elites, whose interests have fitted perfectly into the interests of the racists in the United States. Between them, last year, on the second centenary of the abolition of slavery and the Independence of Haiti, those interests engineered the re-inslavement of Haiti, kidnapping and expelling the president and installing in his place a gang of murderous thugs, killers, rapists and con-men."

"Vehement opponents of Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s Lavalas party, the Bush Administration helped orchestrate the February 2004 coup which ousted the democratically-elected government of Haiti. Among other pro-poor social programs, the Aristide/Lavalas government’s doubling of the minimum wage was anathema to Washington’s “free trade” corporate agenda."

This article just goes to show how anti-democratic the U.N. and the U.S. foreign policies really are. If our purpose is really to promote democracy, why is it that whenever legitimately elected governments comes to office that don't do as they're told by foreign interests, we intervene to eliminate the right of a people to control their own destiny? What right do we have to remove popularly elected governments simply to serve the rich. There's a very good reason why Haiti continues to be one of the poorest nations in this hemisphere, and that's capitalism backed by military force. Democracy means nothing to those that control the wealth in this world, and the biggest hypocrites are our own government. They lie about promoting democracy, since their actions always prove that it's not democracy, but unrestrained capitalism that's really being promoted and forced upon those who don't have the power to resist. They claim to promote freedom, but obviously freedom to chose one's own government and destiny, is not what's meant. Whenever our leaders talk about freedom, they're referring to the freedom to exploit others.

See also:

U.S. Gvt. Funding Anti-Lavalas Groups in Haiti

HaitiAction