Jean-Bertrand Aristide, US Cables, Haitian revolution and Haiti's present condition

[ModelHomeInvasion]

Here's a really great article about the US government's predominant role in former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide's violent ousting back in 2004 (Wikileaks/US cables content):
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/48582


The secret cables, made available to the Haitian weekly Haiti Liberte by WikiLeaks, show how the political defeat of Aristide and his Lavalas movement has been the central pillar of US policy toward the Caribbean nation over the last two US administrations. This is despite ― or perhaps because ― US officials understood that he was the most popular political figure in Haiti. They also reveal how US officials and their diplomatic counterparts from France, Canada, the UN and the Vatican tried to vilify and ostracise the Haitian political leader. For the Vatican, Aristide was an “active proponent of voodoo”. For Washington, he was “dangerous to Haiti’s democratic consolidation”, the secret US cables said.

Bahamian foreign minister Fred Mitchell, apparently referring to Haiti’s revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture’s kidnapping and imprisonment in the Jura mountains in France in 1802, warned “that a perceived ‘Banishing Policy’ has racial and historical overtones in the Caribbean that reminds inhabitants of the region of slavery and past abuse”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Bertrand_Aristide
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Haitian_rebellion

Also, read this essay by Felipe Coronel (also known as Immortal Technique) about the the 18th century Haitian revolution, some Black history and Haiti's current condition:
From the First of the Blacks to the First of the Whites
http://hiphopandpolitics.wordpress.com/2010/01/24/immortal-technique-reflections-on-the-haitian-revolution-present-condition/


See the very existence of their independence showed the entire human race a side of history that we are only now truly rediscovering. European society had relied mainly on creating divisions and the spread of epidemics, not simply superior military prowess, to overcome the indigenous populations of Africa and the Americas. The Haitian Revolution exposed the façade of European invincibility, and it tore away at their justification for invasion on the grounds of Christianization. The mythology of racial superiority began to take the shape of an ancient death mask from classical antiquity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Revolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toussaint_L%27Ouverture

http://www.badassoftheweek.com/toussaint.jpg

\m/

[ModelHomeInvasion]

To better understand how the slaves were treated and what exactly he, Jean Jaques Dessalines, sought to repay to his former masters for, I chose this famous quote from Henri Christophe‘s personal secretary. He, who was once a slave, describes in sick details the daily torture inflicted on the enslaved Africans of Saint-Domingue by the French.

“Have they not hung up men with heads downward, drowned them in sacks, crucified them on planks, buried them alive, crushed them in mortars? Have they not forced them to eat shit? And, having flayed them with the lash, have they not cast them alive to be devoured by worms, or onto anthills, or lashed them to stakes in the swamp to be devoured by mosquitoes? Have they not thrown them into boiling cauldrons of cane syrup? Have they not put men and women inside barrels studded with spikes and rolled them down mountainsides into the abyss? Have they not consigned these miserable blacks to man eating-dogs until the latter, sated by human flesh, left the mangled victims to be finished off with bayonet and poniard?”
Slaves were considered to be mere commodities, and a system of amortization existed to reflect this. A friend of mine has also heard stories of slaves being killed for sport by inserting rockets into their rectums. Again, they were just another asset to do as one pleased with.

[ModelHomeInvasion]

Pretty disappointed that this thread got overlooked.

Regardless, I wanted to post a recommendation for the following book and, seeing as this thread is completely relevant, I thought I'd do so here.

Canada in Haiti: Waging War on the Poor Majority
http://www.amazon.ca/Canada-Haiti-Waging-Poor-Majority/dp/1552661687
http://i43.tower.com/images/mm100087136/canada-in-haiti-waging-war-on-poor-majority-anthony-fenton-paperback-cover-art.jpg


Based on documents gathered using the Access to Information Act and from human rights investigations and first-hand interviews, this report discloses how Canada, the United States, and France undermined the overthrow of Haiti's elected government. Discussing the current state of Haiti—the poorest country in the western hemisphere—topics cover the many deaths, unimaginable suffering, and continued impoverishment of the descendants of the world's only successful slave rebellion.
Read up, ya'll.

[Ismail]

I know little about Haiti, but I can contribute this on US intrigues against Aristide: http://killinghope.org/bblum6/haiti2.htm

[ModelHomeInvasion]

I know little about Haiti, but I can contribute this on US intrigues against Aristide: http://killinghope.org/bblum6/haiti2.htm

Aristide urged a boycott of the elections, saying "The army is our first enemy." The CIA, on the other hand, funded some of the candidates. The Agency later insisted that the purpose of the funding program had not been to oppose Aristide but to provide a "free and open election", by which was meant helping some candidates who didn't have enough money and diminishing Aristide's attempt to have a low turnout, which would have "reduced the election's validity".
Laughable in a sad sort of way.

[SemperFidelis]

So apparently a lot of aid and troops are being withdrawn from Haiti now.