30850: (commentary)Holmstead - Anyone remember Haiti? (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: John Holmstead <cyberkismet5@yahoo.com>

Anyone remember Haiti?
by Bill Fletcher Jr.
Baltimore Times
Originally posted 8/3/2007

One of the most striking features of the mainstream US
media is its ability to 'disappear' certain issues and
stories irrespective of their importance.

Case in point: Haiti. For all intents and purposes,
Haiti has vanished from public view. With the notable
exception of Randall Robinson's new and well-received
book, An Unbroken Agony: Haiti from Revolution to the
Kidnapping of a President, there is almost nothing out
there that would give one any sense of what has been
happening in Haiti since the 2006 electoral victory of
Rene Preval, let alone the developments that
transpired during and after the February 29, 2004
US-assisted coup that overthrew democratically elected
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Unless one is studying the actual situation in Haiti,
the most that the casual?and even interested?US
observer would gather is that Haiti is in near
continuous chaos. The information provided to us here
in the USA is so weak and partial that one is inclined
to throw one's hands up in the air and proclaim that
it is all too messy to understand.

Yet, the situation is far more complicated than we
have been led to believe. Most recently a story broke
with the assistance of the Haiti Information Project
(www.teledyol.net/HIP/about.html). Guy Philippe, one
of the principal leaders of the coup against President
Aristide, appears to have begun a new career singing:
he has been 'singing' about the individuals and
organizations that helped to back the 2004 coup
against Aristide.

Philippe, and his former aide Wilfort Ferdinand,
alleged that they were currently being pressured to
take up arms and overthrow the Preval administration.
For whatever reason, Philippe went on to name names,
including many prominent individuals from within the
historic ruling elite of Haiti, as well as additional
forces that had been involved in the supposed
'peaceful' opposition to President Aristide
pre-February 2004.

Interestingly enough, shortly after Philippe began to
'sing,' Haitian police and the US Drug Enforcement
Administration apparently decided that Philippe was
part of an illegal narcotics operation. They then
moved to have him arrested. It appears that Philippe
has been on the run ever since.

There are several interesting things about this story.
The first is that it starts to sound a lot like that
of Panama's former President Manual Noriega who, after
being a very loyal US-paid operative, was turned upon
by his former sponsors and illegally snatched from
office in 1989. History definitely seems to repeat
itself.

The second piece of interest is that Philippe
confirmed what many of us thought all along, i.e.,
that much of the alleged 'peaceful opposition' to
President Aristide was nothing of the sort, but was
rather one wing of a combined US-backed
destabilization operation aimed at the ouster of the
democratically elected chief of state.

Once again the mainstream US media served the
interests of the dominant forces in US foreign policy
who seek the removal of any leader deemed to be the
slightest bit independent and prone towards policies
that the US finds objectionable. Rather than taking a
critical eye towards events, the mainstream US media,
when it came to Haiti, largely served as the
mouthpiece of the Bush administration as it ratcheted
up the pressure on Aristide, ultimately swooping him
up and into a brief forced exile in the Central
African Republic [Note: President and Mrs. Aristide
currently reside in exile in South Africa, conditions
far different-for the better-than those they
encountered in the Central African Republic].

The third piece takes us full circle. When US policy
has been discredited, it is often easier for the
mainstream US media to completely ignore the 'facts on
the ground.' Thus, we get this ?code of silence? over
Haiti, which only the most dedicated observers
(particularly within the Haitian exile community in
the USA) are able to penetrate. Even then, with facts
in hand, these voices are largely ignored.

It is for these and other reasons that
African-American media outlets, whether printed,
radio, television or Internet, become so vital in
revealing the truth.

Haiti has not faded away. Rather the crimes that have
been perpetrated against the people of Haiti, in our
name, continue only with a veil of secrecy and
indifference. The time has certainly come to rip away
that veil.

Bill Fletcher, Jr. is an international and labor
writer and activist. He is the immediate past
president of TransAfrica Forum and can be reached at papaq54@hotmail.com



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