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Haiti: Leaked Cables Expose U.S. Suppression of Min. Wage, Election Doubts and Elite’s Private Army
Part I
Part II
Drawing on almost 2,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables on Haiti released by WikiLeaks, a partnership between The Nation magazine and the Haitian weekly, Haïti Liberté, exposes new details on how Fruit of the Loom, Hanes and Levi’s worked with the United States to block an increase in the minimum wage in the hemisphere’s poorest nation, how business owners and members of the country’s elite used Haiti’s police force as their own private army after the 2004 U.S.-backed coup that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and how the United States, the European Union and the United Nations supported Haiti’s recent presidential and parliamentary elections, despite concerns over the exclusion of Haiti’s largest opposition party, Lavalas, the party of Aristide. We speak with the reports’ authors, longtime Haiti correspondent Dan Coughlin and Haïti Liberté editor, Kim Ives.
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13 Comments so far
Show AllAnd people still believe the United States of America is there to help its people?
They are there to plunder and steal all that they can and to return the people of Haiti to Slavery.
The most "Hated despots" as described by the Western Media KNOW this truth, speak it and become "thugs and despots" only because they dare to speak the truth.
Let's not act all surprised, now, shall we.
Who was the poster here at CD who kept hammering away at the importance of the minimum wage issue to the coup plotters?
Oops, that was for the coup in Honduras...
I may have been the hammerer, and it was also true in Honduras. As Pablo Neruda says in UNITED FRUIT:
"When the trumpet sounded,
all was prepared on the earth
and Jehovah parceled out the world
to Coca-Cola Inc., Anaconda,
Ford Motors, and other entities:
the United Fruit Company Inc.
reserved for itself the juiciest bit,
the central coast of my land,
the gentle waist of America....."
A wage rise in Honduras would have offended this Jehovah.
Me too. I kept repeating that the US State Department/CIA MO in all these countries is to suppress wages and keep them chained to the US oil corporations by force (overthrowing the government or sham elections) if necessary to avoid any good deals from Chavez or anyone else.
The Monroe Doctrine, written with a great deal of input by Thomas Jefferson, enshrined the doctrine of exploiting this hemisphere while pretending we were defending it. We were/are "defending" it the same way a lion defends his catch from a pack of hyenas. For Central and South America, as far as Europe or the USA calling the shots is concerned, it has always been a "frying pan or the fire" situation.
Now that US corporations have become multinationals and have no loyalty to the USA, the same practices are being applied here.
The new President of Haiti, Michel Martelly, known as Sweet Micky when he led his Kompa band as one of Haiti's most creative and successful musicians, unfortunately is a Duvalierist. His motivation seems to be ensuring that the monied class, which includes him and his wife, will maintain their positions of wealth and power at all costs. It's such a shame that I love the man's music and heard him live numerous time in NYC. I'll feel bad listening to it in the future. A Presidential election in Haiti without Lavalas party is a farce and clearly illegitimate.
WHO PAYS?
Who pays? Yea; a payment for the ongoing program of enslaving a poverty stricken populace, from Haiti, “for a few dollars more” so that others may cover their nakedness?
Who pays? Yes, who pays when a gaggle of liars promote a policy that kills and maims and displaces and ruins the lives of millions of people and that is just in the ongoing excuse called “the war on terror and the war on drugs" to steal everything not already taken?
Who pays? This being just one part called a “global economy” where some plutocrat in an office with air conditioning sits and sets prices for the very staples that people near and in far off lands in Africa and South Asia and many other places must pay to keep the profits up for the few at the expense of the many?
Who pays? For the ongoing destruction of land and the ecosystem that the few have purchased or stolen from a local politician, on the take, so that the local poor have no place to grow food stuffs and so, of course, must buy “on the market”?
Who pays? This is global genocide for nothing more than greed and it will go on until karma pays a visit and demands, yes, demands payment from all who would think that the heart and Soul of “the least of them” are there to be a chattel or dead and gone out sight and mind where they will languish in obscurity to the world stage.
Who pays? Is there a time limit, a time when Karma will extract payment? This I know not but the surety is there and payment will be in full. Tony
The Clinton's again take advantage of a system designed to protect and offer aid to victims. Strange isn't it that our secretary of state is now threatening US citizens on aid ships trying to provide aid to Palestine? That doesn't follow the mechanisms in place that allow for a few to profit while the majority suffer. Only those that haven't followed the Clintons would expect more.
As an individual I wish to apologize to the people of Haiti.
All this goes back as far as the Central Intelligence Agency and the Mafia together stealing the Italian election in 1948. The Cold War was when much of this started. Henry Wallace was right to the degree anyone could be when he predicted a "century of fear" with the Cold War policy coming in. It only stopped when the East bloc collapsed, then came back again with the "war on terror."
What happened to my comment referring to Jackson Browne talking about "how the USA fights for freedom/and we come to the aid fo friend. . ." Some "freedom" and some "friends" we have here. With "friends" and "freedom" like these, who needs enemies or slavery?
Oh, and let's not leave out Henry Wallace' prediction about the Cold War that it would turn out to be a "century of fear" and only missed it as it ended when the East bloc collapsed, but then started right back up with the "war on terror"-- century of fear indeed.
What happened to my comment referring to Jackson Browne talking about "how the USA fights for freedom/and we come to the aid fo friend. . ." Some "freedom" and some "friends" we have here. With "friends" and "freedom" like these, who needs enemies or slavery?
Oh, and let's not leave out Henry Wallace' prediction about the Cold War that it would turn out to be a "century of fear" and only missed it as it ended when the East bloc collapsed, but then started right back up with the "war on terror"-- century of fear indeed.
Many good comments here. Thank you Wikileaks, Democracy Now, The Nation and Haiti Liberte for documenting what we suspected but did not have from the horse's mouth.
This is a story that should be told since it is a playbook in how neo-colonialism works. This story links corporate greed, a campaign of character assassination, a coup of a popularly elected leader, suppression of workers' rights, torture and violence against the opposition, poverty, racism, installation of a compliant kleptocrat, massive theft of aid, and sanctimonious pretense of helping in the form of sending in a military occupation (and in this case, Clintons).
In Iran in 1953 it was oil and big money. In Chile, minerals. In Central America, fruit. Here it is shmattas and control of the Western Hemisphere. But the dynamic is the same.
OK, now we have to boycott Fruit of the Loom, Hanes and Levi’s. And tell people why.
The United States has been behind most of the "Ugliness" over the past 200 years. I believe that the United States Government has, and still does, consist of liars, cheats, thieves, charlatans, snake oil salesmen, slavers, and white slavers, nothing has changed. Todays government is totally owned by the corporations and run by a truly despicable shadow government that uses those in power today as puppets.. Look at Obama just before he was elected and pretty much up until hes had been elected, he was gung ho to bring those who had defiled the Constitution and Bill of Rights to trial and to justice.. Then, within the week there was a total change, first it was really busy, then it was move on and it was off the Table. Remember that Ms. Pelosi... Something stinks to the heavens.... I may be old and no more than a retired Chief, but I can recognize the heavy dark stink of Bull Shit!
No America You are rotten to the core, You are no longer FOR THE PEOPLE.
You have continually crossed the line and have violated the people of the world and not only the citizens of your country, but those of a myriad of others who did no more than try to govern their nation as their people desired.
I am ashamed that I was ever an American... I love your Constitution and Bill of Rights, but I despise your despotic government.