20007: radtimes: Operation Sweatshop (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radtimes <resist@best.com>

Operation Sweatshop

http://www.tmtmetropolis.ru/stories/2004/03/05/120.html

Jean-Bertrand Aristide's move to raise Haiti's minimum wage was the last
straw for American corporations and elitist U.S. factions.

March 5 - 11, 2004
By Chris Floyd

This week, the Bush administration added another violent "regime change"
notch to its gunbelt, toppling the democratically elected president of
Haiti and replacing him with an unelected gang of convicted killers, death
squad leaders, militarists, narcoterrorists, CIA operatives, hereditary
elitists and corporate predators -- a bit like Team Bush itself, in other
words.

Although the Haiti coup was widely portrayed as an irresistible upsurge of
popular discontent, it was of course the result of years of hard work by
Bush's dedicated corrupters of democracy, as William Bowles reports in
Information Clearinghouse. Bushist bagmen funded the political opposition
to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, smuggled guns to exiled Haitian
warlords and carried out a relentless strangulation of the county, cutting
off long-promised financial and structural aid to one of the poorest
nations on earth until food prices were soaring, unemployment spiked to 70
percent and the broken-backed government lost control of society to armed
gangs of criminals, fanatics and the merely desperate. Meanwhile, Haiti was
forced to pay $2 million per month on debts run up by the murderous
U.S.-backed dictatorships that ruled the island for decades after the
American military occupation of 1915-1934.


The ostensible reason for Bush's deadly squeeze-play was Haiti's disputed
elections in 2000. That vote, only the nation's third free election in 200
years, was indeed marred by reports of irregularities -- although these
were not nearly as egregious as the well-documented hijinks which saw a
certain runner-up candidate appointed to the White House that same year.
There was no question that Aristide and his party received an overwhelming
majority of legitimate votes; however, out of the 7,500 offices up for
grabs, election observers did find that seven senate results seemed of
dodgy provenance.

So what happened? The seven disputed senators resigned. New elections for
the seats were called, but the opposition -- two elitist factions financed
by Washington's favorite engines of subversion, the Orwellian-monikered
"National Endowment for Democracy" and "International Republican Institute"
-- refused to take part. The government broke down because the legislature
couldn't convene. When Bush came in, he tightened the screws of the
international blockade of the island, insisting that $500 million in
desperately needed aid could not be released unless the opposition
participated in new elections -- while he was simultaneously paying the
opposition not to participate.

The ultimate aim of this brutal pretzel logic was to grind Haiti's
destitute people further into the ground and destroy Aristide's ability to
govern. His real crime, of course, was not the Florida-style election
follies or the reported "tyranny." Bush loves that stuff -- witness his
eager embrace of the nuke-peddling dictatorship of Pakistan, the
human-boiling hardman of Uzbekistan, the torture-happy tyrant of
Kazakhstan, the drug-running warlords of Afghanistan and so forth.

No, Aristide did something far worse than stuffing ballots or killing
people -- he tried to raise the minimum wage to the princely sum of two
dollars a day. This move outraged the American corporations -- and their
local lackeys -- who have for generations used Haiti as a pool of
dirt-cheap labor and sky-high profits. It was the last straw for the
elitist factions, one of which is actually led by an American citizen and
former Reagan-Bush appointee, manufacturing tycoon Andy Apaid.

Apaid was the point man for the Reagan-Bush "market reform" drive in Haiti.
Of course, "reform," in the degraded jargon of the privateers, means
exposing even the very means of survival and sustenance to the ravages of
powerful corporate interests. For example, the Reagan-Bush plan forced
Haiti to lift import tariffs on rice, which had long been a locally grown
staple. Then they flooded Haiti with heavily subsidized American rice,
destroying the local market and throwing thousands of self-sufficient
farmers out of work. With a now-captive market, the American companies
jacked up their prices, spreading ruin and hunger throughout Haitian society.

The jobless farmers provided new fodder for the factories of Apaid and his
cronies. Reagan and Bush chipped in by abolishing taxes for American
corporations who set up Haitian sweatshops. The result was a precipitous
drop in wages -- and life expectancy. Aristide's first election in 1990
threatened these cozy arrangements, so he was duly ejected by a military
coup, with Bush I's not-so-tacit connivance.

Bill Clinton restored Aristide to office in 1994 -- but only after forcing
him to agree to, yes, "market reforms." In fact, it was Clinton, the
privateers' pal, who instigated the post-election aid embargo that Bush II
used to such devastating effect. Aristide's chief failing as a leader was
his attempt to live up to this bipartisan blackmail. As in every other
nation that's come under the IMF whip, Haiti's already-fragile economy
collapsed. Bush family retainers like Apaid then shoved the country into
total chaos, making it easy prey for the warlords whom Bush operatives --
many of them old Iran-Contra hands -- supplied with arms through the
Dominican Republic, the Boston Globe reports.

When the terrorist warlords attacked last month, Bush flatly refused
Aristide's plea for an international force to preserve Haiti's democracy.
Instead, he sent armed men to "persuade" Aristide to resign. Within hours,
the Bush-backed terrorists were marching through Port-au-Prince, executing
Aristide's supporters, the NY Times reports.

Guess they won't be asking for two dollars a day now, eh? Mission accomplished!

Thus, just like his father, Bush has overthrown Aristide, and for the same
reason: He represented a threat to their "natural order" -- unchecked rule
by pampered, protected elites. Terrorism, despotism, torture, WMD
trafficking: All of this can countenanced, even embraced. But Aristide's
alternative -- democratic, capitalist, but with "a prejudice for the poor,"
as enjoined by the Gospels -- this evil can never be tolerated.

Annotations

Private Interests and U.S. Foreign Policy in Haiti
Contested Social Orders, Vanderbilt University Press, 1997

U.S. Political Maneuvering Behind Aristide Ouster
Newsday, March 1, 2004

Why They Had to Crush Aristide
The Guardian, March 2, 2004

The Fire This Time in Haiti was U.S.-Fueled
Taipei Times, March 1, 2004

Veterans of Past Murderous Campaigns are Leading Haiti's Rebellion
New York Times, Feb. 29, 2004

Caught Between a Rock and a Bush
Information Clearing House, June 3, 2003

Is the U.S. Funding Haitian Contras?
Dissident Voice, February 2004

The United States in Haiti: Harvest of Hunger
Food First, Fall 1996

Aristide Backers Blame Bush Administration for Ouster
Boston Globe, March 1, 2004

Looters Step Over the Dead as Haiti Collapses Into Anarchy
The Independent, Feb. 29, 2004

Throttled by History
Counterpunch, Feb. 24, 2004

Haiti Rebel Says He's in Charge, Political Chaos Deepens
New York Times, March 3, 2004

In Haiti, Past is Prologue
Findlaw Legal Commentary, March 1, 2003

Bush Accused of Supporting Haitian Rebels
UPI, Feb. 27, 2004

An Insurrection in the Making
Madre Backgrounder, February 2004

Haiti as Target Practice
Counterpunch, March 1, 2004

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