After Aristide, Haiti faces organizing rebels

[seemslikeadream]

On patrol in Mirebalais (Newsday photo by Letta Tayler)


By Letta Tayler
Latin America Correspondent

June 1, 2004


MIREBALAIS, Haiti -- In this hardscrabble town in the Haitian hinterlands, armed members of the country's disbanded military serve as mayor, police chief, judge and jury.

Dressed in uniforms from the army of the neighboring Dominican Republic, former Haitian soldiers patrol the streets by foot and on motor scooter. They march in parades. They hold the keys to the jail and sit behind the police chief's desk, taking crime reports.


"We're the ones in charge," declared former Cpl. Jean Hubert Marcelin from the Mirebalais police station, which ex-soldiers commandeered in March. "We're proud to be performing a revolutionary mission to change the country."

Despite the deployment of a U.S.-led coalition of 3,700 international peacekeeping troops in Haiti, thousands of ex-soldiers who ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide three months ago control vast portions of this desperately poor and troubled nation.

more
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-wohait013826732jun01,0,1256802.story?coll=ny-worldnews-headlines

[struggle4progress]

1. This belongs on the front page for a while

A band of armed thugs installed with US support:

'Even U.S. Ambassador James B. Foley, a key player here in Haiti in recent months, recently conceded that the interim government of Prime Minister Gerald Latortue is "outgunned." Foley said an 8,000-strong United Nations peacekeeping force that is to replace the U.S.-led troops could be better equipped to keep the rebels "in check." But so far, only 2,350 troops and police have signed on to the UN force, which is viewed widely as being even less interested in the messy task of disarmament than the U.S.-led coalition, which hasn't even entered many rebel strongholds in the interior.'

[dArKeR]

2. Free Aristide 'won't organise armed struggle'

Mariette le Roux | Pretoria, South Africa

Ousted Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide is not a refugee in South Africa, but a free person and a guest of the government, Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said on Wednesday.

She told reporters in Pretoria that Aristide will be allowed to make political speeches while in the country.

"I am sure he is not going to be organising an armed struggle from here," she said. "He can talk to anyone, he's a free man."

She would not divulge where he is housed, except that it is in Gauteng.

The minister would not say how much has been budgeted for Aristide's stay. She said no extra expenditure will be required for his housing, security guards or transport as these are paid for by the government as a matter of course.

"A guest does not pay rent," she added.

http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=67310

Why shouldn't he? Every bastard crony the Bush/Reagan Adm. supports is not only encouraged to take up arms and kill but the CIA is directed to assist them with training and our American tax dollars.

http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/fdtcards/Cards_Index.html

[Imperialism Inc.]

3. They are pulling out on June 30?

Nothing like using the cover of the Iraq "handover" to bury that fact.

I also found amusing that the diplomats pretend to be so concerned about the rebels being in charge. As if that wasn't the whole point in the first place.

Is anyone emerging to take Aristide's place? Through the church. I imagine that would be quite difficult at this point, though.

[seemslikeadream]

4. Aristide will take Aristide's place

He has played this game once before and knows the rules. When there is a bush in the White House he can not be the leader of Haiti. Ariside will sit and wait it out like us all. Clinton made it right. Kerry should too.

WATCH THIS VIDEO


EVERY DEATH CREATES NEW ENEMIES
MORE TERRORISTS
MORE DANGER
MORE DEATH
AND REMEMBER...
HE IS JUST GETTING STARTED...
BUSH'S PLAN FOR PEACE
IS THE PEACE OF THE COMMON GRAVE



http://www.bushflash.com/pax.html


Let America be America Again...by Langston Hughes


Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!