27329: Esser: (news) U.S. Gvt. Channels Millions Through National Endowment for Democracy to Fund Anti-Lavalas Groups in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser

Democracy Now!
<http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/23/1441204>

January 23, 2006


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[Transcript of Interview Below]


U.S. Gvt. Channels Millions Through National Endowment for Democracy
to Fund Anti-Lavalas Groups in Haiti


We take a look at Haiti, which is preparing for upcoming national
elections. Independent Canadian journalist, Anthony Fenton, joins us
to discuss the National Endowment for Democracy - the US
government-funded group - that is pouring millions of dollars into
trying to influence Haiti's political future.

Nearly two years after the overthrow of President Jean Bertrand
Aristide, Haiti will be holding national elections next month. Former
President Rene Preval, a Aristide ally, is leading in the polls.
Meanwhile, a judge has dropped the most serious charges against
jailed priest Gerard Jean Juste. Jean Juste was imprisoned in July
over the murder of journalist Jacques Roche - killed while Jean Juste
was in Miami. After Jean Juste's arrest, Haitian officials prevented
Lavalas - the political movement aligned with Aristide - from
registering him as their presidential candidate, on the grounds he
was imprisoned. Although he has been cleared in Roche's murder,
authorities say Jean Juste will remain in prison over weapons
charges. Amnesty International calls him a prisoner of conscience.
Calls for his release have intensified with the recent announcement
he's been diagnosed with leukemia.

Meanwhile, violence continues to affect Haiti's poorest areas. Last
week, two Jordanian troops with the UN mission were killed in a
gun-battle in the poor neighborhood of Cite Soleil. Local residents
later reported UN troops had shot at a hospital in the area. UN
troops have stepped up armed raids on Cite Soleil amid pressure from
business leaders and foreign officials.

We want to continue our Haiti coverage leading up to the election by
looking at the activities of a government-funded organization that is
pouring millions of dollars into trying to influence the country's
political future. The National Endowment for Democracy is one of a
handful of state-funded groups that have played a pivotal role in the
internal politics of several Latin American and Caribbean countries
in the service of the US government.

The NED operates with an annual budget of $80 million dollars from
U.S. Congress and the State Department. In Venezuela, it's given
money to several political opponents of President Hugo Chavez. With
elections underway in Haiti, it's reportedly doing the same to groups
linked to the country's tiny elite and former military.

Last week Democracy Now! interviewed Anthony Fenton about NED's
activities in Haiti and across the Caribbean and Latin America.
Fenton is an independent journalist and co-author of the book "Canada
in Haiti: Waging War On The Poor Majority." He has interviewed
several top governmental and non-governmental officials dealing with
Haiti as well as leading members of Haiti's business community. Last
month, he helped expose an NED-funded journalist who was filing
stories for the Associated Press from Haiti. The Associated Press
subsequently terminated its relationship with the journalist.


• Anthony Fenton, independent Canadian journalist and co-author of
the book "Canada in Haiti: Waging War On The Poor Majority."


RUSH TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: Last week, I interviewed Anthony Fenton, about N.E.D.’s
activities in Haiti and across the Caribbean and Latin America.
Fenton is an independent Canadian journalist and co-author of the
book, Canada in Haiti: Waging War on the Poor Majority. He has
interviewed several top governmental and non-governmental officials
dealing with Haiti, as well as leading members of Haiti’s business
community. Last month, he helped expose an N.E.D.-funded journalist
who was filing stories for the Associated Press from Haiti. The
Associated Press subsequently terminated its relationship with her.
We go now to an excerpt from that interview. Anthony Fenton was in a
studio in Vancouver. I began by asking him to talk about the current
situation in Haiti.

• ANTHONY FENTON: Well, indeed, obviously, there is an ongoing
military occupation there ever since the forced ouster of President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February of 2004 in a coup d’etat that was
assisted and planned by the Canadian government, along with the U.S.
government and the French government. Of course, speaking from
Canada, Canada played an integral role in the overthrow of Aristide
and continues to play an integral role in the post-invasion
occupation of Haiti.

• They're leading up to what are now the fourth scheduled period of
elections. There have been several postponements. This is due in part
-- the original intention of the invasion, of course, was to subvert
the young process of popular democracy that existed in Haiti prior to
the coup, and of course, if Aristide hadn’t been overthrown, Haiti
would have already carried out their democratic election, their
presidential elections.

• And, of course, the fear of the United States and of organizations
like the National Endowment for Democracy and the State Department,
of course, was that popular democracy would take root in Haiti under
another Lavalas government, and they have set about to undermine the
popular movement that existed in support of Jean-Bertrand Aristide
and the Lavalas Party. And we're seeing today the consolidation of
the elite rule that they have long envisioned for Haiti ever since
the fall of “Baby Doc” Duvalier in the mid-80s.

• AMY GOODMAN: Anthony, can you just lay out what the National
Endowment for Democracy is?

• ANTHONY FENTON: Well, yeah, they were formed in the early 1980s
under the Reagan administration. Ostensibly, they purport to promote
pro-democracy organizations and democratic values across the world.
Just last October, President Bush spoke at a National Endowment for
Democracy gathering, reiterating the vision of Reagan as he set about
to, as they say, “promote democracy throughout the world,” and they
were given – they've been given various budgets allocated by Congress
every year, as you said at the onset. Now their budget stands at $80
million a year. But they are, of course, just one organization among
many that are linked to the U.S. Agency for International
Development, as I said, the State Department. Hundreds of millions of
dollars now, in fact, more money is now being spent than ever before
on what they call democracy promotion.

• Now, the historical record on the National Endowment for Democracy
is very clear, when we look at the work of people like Philip Agee
and William Robinson and William Blum, Noam Chomsky and others, and
most recently, if we look at the work of attorney and independent
journalist, Eva Golinger, who exposed, through Freedom of Information
Act requests, the role that the N.E.D. played in attempting to
subvert democracy and the revolutionary process that’s unfolding in
Venezuela in 2002. The N.E.D. played a crucial role in fomenting the
opposition to Hugo Chavez, and they did play a role in the attempted
coup against him in April of 2002, and very much the same patterns we
have seen develop in Haiti.

• On your show, in 2004, you interviewed Max Blumenthal, who wrote an
article, an important article for Salon that outlined the role of the
International Republican Institute, and when we talk about the
N.E.D., we can't talk about them without also talking about the
International Republican Institute and the other affiliated
organizations. There’s a virtual labyrinth of these organizations
that receive funding that’s specifically earmarked for the
undermining of any widespread social movements, any rudiments of
popular democracy that should manifest, either in Latin America or
anywhere in the world.

• So, again, this is sort of the premise of what the National
Endowment for Democracy really does, and as we look at what they're
doing in Haiti – and how I was able to learn about what they’re
currently doing in Haiti came about through the process of a first
documentary reporting trip to Haiti in September and October of 2005,
where we spoke to a number of N.E.D. grantees, Haitian organizations
that received funding from the National Endowment for Democracy. I
returned to Canada and set about to conduct a series of interviews
with N.E.D. and any program officer, in particular, with I.R.I.
officials, with in-country officials who are managing several million
dollars in U.S.-funded democracy promotion activities, as you said
also, that are linked closely to the Haitian elite, to the opposition
organizations, such as the Group of 184, the Democratic Convergence.
These are the organizations that agitated most strongly for the
overthrow of Aristide and that were working with the N.E.D. and the
I.R.I. in the years preceding the 2004 coup.

• AMY GOODMAN: The I.R.I. being the International Republican Institute.

• ANTHONY FENTON: Yes. We know that – for example, just the other
day, I spoke to a woman who is the leader of an organization called
COFEL. It’s an umbrella organization of women political leaders. In
the years before the coup against Aristide in 2004, the I.R.I. would
bring in, they would bus in or fly in groups of anywhere between 60
and 80 of these women. And, of course, they're busing in other men
and other political figures in Haiti. But they would bus them into
the Dominican Republic, because in 1999, at the time, Ambassador
Timothy Carney – he was the U.S. ambassador at the time. That’s very
important, because Ambassador Carney is the current interim
ambassador to Haiti, and he was also a member of the lobby – the
think tank in Washington called the Haiti Democracy Project that
played an integral role in fomenting this demonization campaign
against Aristide.

  • In any case, in 1999, the I.R.I. was closed down. Their operations
were shut down. They were forced to leave Haiti, and until the coup
in 2004, the I.R.I. did not have an in-country presence, so they were
doing most of their work in the Dominican Republic with people like
Stanley Lucas, who is well known as a card-carrying Republican
Haitian American who was hired by the International Republican
Institute during the first coup period against Aristide in the early
1990s, and he’s the one who sort of helped to build the political
opposition from the Dominican Republic and enable the coup to take
place. But that process has just followed through since the coup.
Well, of course, the International Republican Institute now has an
in-country office in Haiti, and through that office they're able to
penetrate all sectors of Haitian civil society in their attempt to
undermine the popular movement.

• Now, I would like to mention that in my interview, and this is a
rare interview with an N.E.D. program officer, and this is the
program officer in Washington who is responsible for Haiti currently,
a woman named Fabiola Cordoba. She took over in, I believe in,
November, as the program officer, and she revealed to me, not only an
extensive list of documents that show the N.E.D.’s approved grants
for 2005. These are, in a sense, declassified, because these are
documents that are not supposed to be published until May of 2006, at
least according to another N.E.D. spokesperson. But what’s clear in
these documents is that the N.E.D. went from, for example, a zero
dollar budget in Haiti in 2003 to a $540,000 budget in Haiti in 2005.

• What they’ve also done -- and many Haitian people that I speak to
have told me that Haiti is considered the laboratory for these sort
of subversive activities on the part of the United States government.
And in the context of this experimental process, they’ve hired, for
the first time, an in-country program officer, as you mentioned,
Régine Alexandre, who was a stringer for the Associated Press and the
New York Times, was doubling, moonlighting as an N.E.D. program
officer, and the Associated Press severed ties with her as a result.

• Now, Fabiola Cordoba also told me that when she was in Haiti in
2002, working for one of the N.E.D.’s affiliated organizations, the
National Democratic Institute, she said a lot of lines were being
drawn between Haiti and Venezuela, where although 70% of the
population supported Aristide, there was a very fragmented
opposition. The rest of the 30% was divided between 120 different
opposition groups, so the objective of the I.R.I. and the N.E.D. was
to consolidate this opposition to build a viable opposition to
somehow break the grip that the popular movement in Haiti had on the
political environment there. And she said that Chavez – something
very similar was happening in Venezuela, and of course, in 2002, the
coup d’état happened there on the basis of this sort of analysis, the
basis, this fear that the United States has of popular democracy and
the need to subvert any attempts at consolidating popular rule and
implementing policies that are in the interests of the majority poor
in places like Venezuela and Haiti.

• AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Anthony Fenton, independent author
and journalist who has exposed a A.P. stringer in Haiti, Régine
Alexandre, as also being on the payroll of the National Endowment for
Democracy. And now talking about those parallels between Haiti and
Venezuela, of course, 2002, the attempted coup against Hugo Chavez,
what is your understanding of the U.S. involvement in terms of the,
you know, dollar amount in Venezuela, putting money into the
opposition?

• ANTHONY FENTON: Well, it is very interesting, because since the
activities of the N.E.D. have been so thoroughly exposed by the likes
of Eva Golinger and Jeremy Bigwood through The Chavez Code, they're
very concerned with their perception in the area. So what they’re
doing, in a way, they’ve continued to funnel large amounts of money
into Venezuela, but they're doing it also by outsourcing, if you
will. For example, they have given a grant to a Canadian think tank
called the Canadian Foundation of the Americas, and through that,
they're attempting to go through the back door, if you will, riding
the perception of Canada as being a benign counterweight to the U.S.
in the hemisphere, in order to penetrate Venezuelan civil society.

• This is an important year, of course, not only in Venezuela, but
throughout the hemisphere, in the sense that there are many
presidential elections taking place. Now the N.E.D. program officer
told me that Venezuela, Haiti, Ecuador, and Bolivia are the four top
priority countries for the N.E.D. in 2006, looking ahead to 2006 and,
of course, Cuba is the perennial top of that list. They're a special
exception, because the Department of State earmarks a certain amount
of funds for the N.E.D.'s work in Cuba. In fact, they doubled the
amount of money being used to subvert revolutionary Cuba in 2005.

• Now, what they’re doing with the Foundation of the Americas is, in
fact, on the board of directors there you have a former coup plotter
in the form of Beatrice Rangel, who not only played an active role,
when she was an advisor to former Venezuelan president Perez in the
late 1980s, literally carrying bags of money, according to William
Robinson, to Nicaraguan Contras operating out of Venezuela, but she
is the person, Rangel, who facilitated this N.E.D. program with this
Canadian think tank, and she herself said that, you know, Canada
enjoys this perception, and N.E.D.'s outsourcing to Canada is just
another way for the N.E.D. to penetrate Venezuelan civil society.

• But in the case of Haiti, getting back to that point, what we’re
seeing is the N.E.D. works very closely with the International
Republican Institute. One of the N.E.D.’s primary grantees in Haiti
is a key member of the Group of 184 political opposition to Aristide,
named Hans Tippenhauer. He heads up an organization that works with
Haitian youth. Typically we see the N.E.D. working with Haitian
youth, with Haitian women, but what they're doing – Mr. Tippenhauer,
he was one of the first people to call the rebels, the paramilitaries
that entered from the Dominican Republic in 2004, he referred to them
as “freedom fighters,” and he get grants from, not only the N.E.D.,
but also the I.R.I., and he also happens to be on the campaign of an
independent presidential candidate named Charles Henri Baker, who was
also one of the leaders of the Group of 184. He’s a sweatshop owner
there and a brother-in-law of Andy Apaid, another leader of the Group
of 184, who recently has been pressuring, with other members of the
elite, such as Reginald Boulos, for the United Nations [inaudible] to
force to enter the poor neighborhoods and commit more atrocities, so
as to enable this process of consolidating elite rule in Haiti to
take root.

• And so, Hans Tippenhauer, as he doubles as a campaign manager for
the Group 184 political candidate, the business candidate, basically
a candidate that the U.S. is supporting, he is also working to
penetrate Haitian civil society on a level that will allow, in the
long term, this neo-liberal vision, this corporate vision of Haiti to
take root, the so-called democracy, because the National Endowment
for Democracy does promote some form of democracy. It’s a very narrow
institutional form, kind of like we see in Canada.

• It is ironic that we have elections going on here in Canada right
now, but we don't see the National Endowment for Democracy or the
International Republican Institute here trying to manipulate the
political environment, because we’re already on page with the State
Department. We’re already on page with the N.E.D., so we don’t need
their guidance, but a place like Haiti, where there were -- where
popular democracy was beginning to take root, even though in the face
of a massive economic embargo and in the face of destabilization by
these very organizations, it is very necessary that these
organizations are in Haiti right now playing this fundamental role,
behind the scenes, I should say, because the mainstream media has not
written a single story about what these organizations are doing
behind the scenes to effect political change in Haiti today.

AMY GOODMAN: Independent journalist, Anthony Fenton. We will return
with him in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We return to our interview on Haiti with independent
journalist Anthony Fenton, co-author of the book, Canada in Haiti:
Waging War on the Poor Majority.

• AMY GOODMAN: Anthony Fenton, one of the people that you have
written and talked about is Ira Lowenthal. I remember him from, well,
more than a decade ago in the midst of the first coup against
President Aristide in 1991 to ’94, working for USAID in-country in
Haiti. What is his role today?

• ANTHONY FENTON: Well, after the coup, Ira Lowenthal reentered
Haiti. Now, he had had to leave, I believe, in 2002, because he was
getting too hot. He was up to some activities that were being
scrutinized by the Haitian government. Now, he joined and helped
create the Haiti Democracy Project in 2002, in late 2002, and then he
supported the emergence of the Group of 184 shortly thereafter, which
is basically the Haitian version of the Haiti Democracy Project. I
mentioned the Boulos family. Rudolph Boulos is a board member,
founding board member of the Haiti Democracy Project, as well, and
he's actually running for Senate in the area of Haiti where they plan
to develop free-trade zones and open up a whole swath of sweatshops.

• But Ira Lowenthal, he was working for the Americas Development
Foundation, which is one of the key organizations implementing these
so-called Democracy Enhancement projects prior to the coup. After the
coup, he had a brief stint with them, and then he moved on to this
other organization called the United Nations Office for Project
Services. Now, it's a very interesting organization that does
reconstruction work, and they're working -- they're called the
self-financing arm or management services arm of the United Nations,
very obscure and little known, but Ira Lowenthal became the director
of this organization in Haiti just after the coup, and he helped set
up registration centers for the elections, and he's played an
integral role in the sort of infrastructure of carrying out this
election process.

• Now, he stepped down as director of UNOPS, and UNOPS currently gets
a $3 million contract from USAID to work and funnel money to the
political parties -- the "approved” political parties, most of which
happen to comprise the former political opposition to Aristide, the
Democratic Convergence. Now Ira Lowenthal is a key consultant for
UNOPS today, and in fact, there’s a Canadian by the name of
Jean-Francois Laurent, who directs the UNOPS activities in Haiti. But
Ira Lowenthal, anyone I speak to, everyone speaks glowingly of him in
the democracy promotion community. He's an old hand there, as you’ve
said. He had links to the Boulos family back in the previous coup
period, and, of course, the Boulos family is said to have had
relations with FRAP, the paramilitary organization set up by the
C.I.A. in order to destroy the popular movement at that time.

• Now the Boulos family again, it has been widely reported that they
may be linked along with the Apaids to death squad activity in Cite
Soleil, anti-Lavalas gangs that are designed to destroy the popular
support for the calls of demanding the return of Aristide or
demanding the right to vote for the candidate of choice, now Rene
Preval. But Ira Lowenthal has played an instrumental role. In fact,
every week this organization, UNOPS, to give you an example of the
sort of familial relations there, they meet with the I.R.I., the
N.D.I., with USAID, and with I.F.E.S, which is linked to the I.R.I.
The chairman of I.F.E.S. is a former Reagan advisor and a Bush
appointee as U.N. ambassador just before the 9/11 attacks in 2001,
William Hybl.

• So you see this family meeting on a weekly basis, coordinating
their activities. They’re funneling millions of dollars to the
political parties, by way of giving them credits for TV advertising,
for pamphlets, for t-shirts and all sorts of other activities. And,
of course, this is all geared towards -- they're hoping, I think,
right now, that there will be a run-off election, sort of like there
was in Liberia, where the International Republican Institute and
these other organizations played a central role, as well, because if
there’s a run-off election -- and it’s possible that one of their
rightwing candidates, perhaps such as Marc Bazin, who's running under
the Lavalas name today, but of course was a World Bank candidate that
Aristide beat in a landslide in 1990 -- they're hoping that one of
these candidates, maybe it'll be Henri Baker, will be able to win in
a run-off.

• But there’s also the terror card that they're holding over their
heads. The paramilitaries that entered in 2004 like Guy Philippe.
Other well known NARCO traffickers, the nephew of the current Prime
Minister, Gerard Latortue, his name is Youri Latortue, the mere
mention of his name in Haiti, strikes the fear in the people's eyes
when you speak to them, and this person is running for senate in the
Artibonite region. And the possibility of a violent intervention in
this election process is in the background, and it looms, and people
like Ira Lowenthal and these other organizations, the N.E.D., they
are well aware of this, and so it will be interesting to see how it
plays out.

• AMY GOODMAN: And the role, Anthony Fenton -- you're speaking to us
from Vancouver, Canada, in the midst of your own elections -- of
Canada and the current candidates in the coup of 2004, as well as
what you understand is the U.S. role that forced Aristide out?


• ANTHONY FENTON: Well, indeed, Canada in September hosted a meeting
with members of Haiti's private sector with that think tank that I
mentioned earlier that's getting N.E.D. funding, FOCAL, the
Foundation for the Americas. Reginald Boulos, one of the long-time
elites who supported this U.S. vision for Haiti and has long-standing
ties to Washington, he was invited to this meeting. And what you were
seeing is Canada supporting whole-heartedly. In fact, Roger Noriega,
former Secretary of State for the western hemisphere, came to Canada
just after the coup with Adolfo Franco from USAID. Franco,
incidentally, has refused to be interviewed on the question of
USAID's activities on the democracy promotion side in Haiti recently.
But they came to Canada just after the coup with the intention of
asking Canada to play a leadership role in Haiti, and Canada quickly
acquiesced.

• In fact, when I was in Haiti in September with a couple of other
Canadian journalists, we interviewed a top-level Canadian diplomat,
and he was boasting how finally in Haiti there's a government that's
being ruled by the transnational elite in the private sector and
civil society. And Canada's job is to stand on the frontlines
diplomatically, politically, and they're also helping out militarily,
and on the intelligence side, to prop up this illegitimate regime
that was installed by the United States, that was imported from
Florida and installed -- imposed on the Haitian people. And so Canada
is playing an increasing role and they are expecting to play -- in
fact, this high level diplomat told us Canada is sort of like earning
its stripes in Haiti, because there is going to be a coming
transition, and he mentioned Cuba specifically, and of course,
strategically where Haiti is situated -- the State Department in 2005
listed Haiti and Colombia as the two primary strategic states -- so
it's very important that they take control of Haiti.

• There is a Dominican Republic interest there, as well. They are
possibly establishing military bases there. The U.S. has for a long
time dictated the Dominican military’s policies for the region, and
the Canadian government here, what we're seeing, is under the liberal
government that is about, it appears, to lose power to a
neo-conservative electoral coup, if you will, led by Canada's
Conservative Party and Stephen Harper, who is a well-known admirer of
George Bush. Canada, the liberal government, initiated a rightwing
shift over the past decade, that we’ve seen a new role for Canada in
the Americas. In fact, this high-level diplomat referred to the
destiny of Canada and the Americas being fulfilled through their role
in Haiti today.

• AMY GOODMAN: Anthony Fenton is our guest. He's speaking to us from
Vancouver, Canada. And the proof of the involvement of the U.S.
government in the coup that forced out President Aristide February
29th, 2004?

• ANTHONY FENTON: Well, in 2003 there was a meeting held in Ottawa
called the Ottawa Initiative on Haiti. At the time, it was a secret
high level round table that did not involve any Haitians, although it
was a meeting that was designed to discuss the future of Haiti. It
was leaked by the host of that meeting, a Canadian Member of
Parliament named Denis Paradis, to a Quebec magazine, that the
possibility of removing Aristide and installing a U.N.-style
trusteeship was discussed. This was quickly glossed over, and the
Canadian government retracted that this was discussed, but after the
coup I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request and did receive
some of the documents, which seem to corroborate what was leaked at
the time, that there were high-level meetings being held not only in
Ottawa, but other follow-up meetings, I understand, in Washington and
in El Salvador that planned the overthrow of Aristide on the
diplomatic side.

• The Organization of American States was involved. And the then
Assistant Secretary General of the O.A.S., Luigi Einaudi, who
famously said on the eve of Haiti's independence, ‘The problem with
Haiti is that the international community is so screwed up and
divided that we're actually allowing Haitians to run Haiti.’ It’s
people like this and sentiments like this that informed these sorts
of meetings that took place before the coup, and, you know, the
writing was on the wall for Aristide when he was elected in November
of 2000. We saw the opposition boycott the elections. The Gallup
polls indicated a landslide victory for Aristide, and again we return
to the point made by the N.E.D. program officer, it was simply the
case that, from the perspective of the United States, Canada, and
France, and the European Union, the primary backers of this coup
d'etat, that Aristide was consolidating power, that the Lavalas
Party, in particular, and that the popular movement was emerging and
was taking root, and that is what had to be overthrown and stopped in
its tracks, and that's what we're seeing happen today.

• AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, Anthony Fenton, on the issue of what is
happening in the Cite Soleil with the killings of innocent residents
there, also the killings of U.N. forces there, recently you had
Reginald Boulos and Andy Apaid, well known anti-Lavalas leaders,
holding a major protest, calling for a crackdown on Cite Soleil. Can
you talk about that?

• ANTHONY FENTON: Yeah, again, this -- I read that as a provocation.
They've been -- if you go back to summer of 2005, there was a
kidnapping spree, as the The New York Times and the L.A. Times
reported it, that was used as a pretext to demand that the U.N. go
into Cite Soleil and root out the so-called chimeres, the so-called
bandits, the so-called terrorists. Now, I learned through sources
inside the prime minister's office in Haiti and through other sources
that, again, Youri Latortue, the nephew of Gerard Latortue, was
involved in this kidnapping spree, that he was carrying out and
overseeing a kidnapping ring of his own that was used as a pretext to
go into these neighborhoods and commit massacres. And on July 6th,
it’s been well reported and well documented that a massacre did take
place, and it was carried out by the United Nations. It buckled to
the pressure that was being exerted on it by the likes of Reginald
Boulos and other members of the elite, like Andy Apaid.

• And so I see, I think, from what I can tell, this is being
replayed, and the kidnapping spree -- it’s possible that these
assaults on the so-called peacekeepers, the Jordanians who have
played one of the more repressive roles in Cite Soleil, that that is
another provocation that is intended to pressure the U.N. forces to
go into Cite Soleil and fire arbitrarily, as they've been doing
repeatedly. You know, within the past few days a number of people
have been killed in Cite Soleil, even since that demonstration.
Canadian journalists who are there right now, Aaron Lakoff and Leslie
Bagg, reported on how four people in Cite Soleil have been killed.

• And the U.N. knows that they can't go into Cite Soleil and conduct
these operations without killing civilians, and yet people like
Reginald Boulos don't seem to mind if civilians get killed. It’s just
collateral damage, and he’s said that he is willing to create a fund
to assist the victims of Cite Soleil. When we interviewed Mr. Boulos
in September, he referred to himself as Mr. Cite Soleil. So, he has a
vested interest in putting down this popular movement that's calling
for Aristide's return or calling for free and fair elections that
would see Rene Preval win in a likely landslide.

• AMY GOODMAN: Independent journalist Anthony Fenton, co-author of
the book Canada in Haiti: Waging War on the Poor Majority. Haitian
elections are February 7. Canadian elections are today.



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