Haiti: Wyclef Jean for president?

[Hannah Bell]

Wyclef Jean is going to run for the presidency of Haiti.

***

Jean comes from a prominent Haitian family that has virulently opposed Lavalas since the 1990 elections. His uncle is Raymond Joseph--also a rumored presidential candidate--who became Haitian ambassador to the United States under the coup government and remains so today. As Kevin Pina writes in an article titled "It's not all about that! Wyclef Jean is fronting in Haiti":

" the co-publisher of Haiti Observateur, a right-wing rag that has been an apologist for the killers in the Haitian military going back as far as the brutal coup against Aristide in 1991."

Wyclef Jean supported the 2004 coup. When gun-running former army and death squad members trained by the CIA were overrunning Haiti's north on February 25, 2004, MTV's Gideon Yago wrote, "Wyclef Jean voiced his support for Haitian rebels on Wednesday, calling on embattled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to step down..." JEAN ALSO produced the movie The Ghosts of Cité Soleil, an anti-Aristide and anti-Lavalas hit piece, which tells us that President Aristide left voluntarily, without mention of his kidnapping by the U.S. military, and presents the main coup leaders in a favorable light.

It features interviews with sweatshop owners Andy Apaid and Charles Henry Baker without telling us they hate Aristide because he raised the minimum wage... It uncritically interviews coup leader Louis-Jodel Chamblain, without telling us he worked with the Duvalier dictatorship's brutal militia, the Tonton Macoutes, in the 1980s--and that following the coup against Aristide in 1991, he was the "operations guy" for the FRAPH paramilitary death squad... It uncritically interviews coup leader Guy Philippe, without telling us he's a former Haitian police chief who was trained by U.S. Special Forces in Ecuador in the early 1990s or that the U.S. embassy admitted that Philippe was involved in the transshipment of narcotics...

http://socialistworker.org/2010/08/12/wyclef-for-president




Raymond Alcide Joseph is mostly known as a journalist. When he was 19 years old he established the first print shop and founded "Reyon Limyè" (Rays of Light), the first monthly Christian newspaper in Cayes Haiti. "Rays of Light" still exists.

He went to become a radio personality in the 1960’s, having founded the first radio broadcast in New York beamed against the Duvalier dictatorship. "Radio Vonvon" or "Radio Bug" was nicknamed the "Six O’clock Mass" because it hit the waves at 6:00 a.m. and was the broadcast not to miss.

Mr. Joseph translated the first New Testament and Psalms in Haitian Creole under the auspices of the American Bible Society in October 1960.

In the 70’s and 80’s he was at the Wall Street Journal in New York as a financial writer and co-founded, with his brother Leo Joseph, the Haiti-Observateur, the first crusading commercial Haitian weekly. The Observateur remains the premier organ abroad of the Haitian community.

In 1990 Mr. Joseph was called to be Haiti’s Chargé d’Affaires in Washington and his country’s representative at the Organization of American States. After helping with the first democratic elections in December 1990, he returned to the Haiti Observateur where he remained until he was called back to Washington in March 2004, where he is currently the Ambassador.

Raymond Joseph is a graduate pastor from the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, a B. A. holder in Anthropology from Wheaton College, Wheaton, Ill. He also has a Master’s degree in Social Anthropology/Linguistics from the University of Chicago.

http://www.haiti.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=46&Itemid=73.

[EFerrari]

1. I just watched "Aristide and the Endless Revolution".

That was the template for Honduras.

[Hannah Bell]

2. can you elaborate?

[EFerrari]

10. Oh, and another thing about that documentary.

There was CSPAN Theater aka congressional hearings over Aristide just as there was for Zelaya. The witnesses that testified at each set of hearings were overwhelmingly anti-democratic corrupt shills for the empire. But, of the all the members sitting on the committee that did the hearings on Haiti, guess which two were the only ones to really get down with the ex-State Department flunkies turned anti-Aristide lobbyists?

Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters.

[Hannah Bell]

12. thanks.

[Peace Patriot]

14. Ah, I've been wondering about the Rangel/Waters thing. Thank you, EFerrari!

I think you are exactly right. The big move to install the "free trade for the rich" government in Haiti is in the works, and Rangel and Waters would be powerful objectors to it.

[EFerrari]

16. Well, something clicked when I saw that. It makes sense that BushCo

either wants to oust these two or in Maxine's case, strongly warn them off. Maxine was stunning. She literally told the scumbags that she wanted them to stop repeating misinformation, that she did not want to hear it said again in the hearing.

[Billy Burnett]

17. And Maxine was making a lot of noise about CIA/DEA/Contra/Crack cocaine decades ago.

Haiti and the DR were transshipment points to S. Fl, Texas, and Arkansas.

Now there's full control over Haiti and Honduras (Plan Clinton). Add that to Plan Colombia, and we're cookin' w/gas.

Don't forget the I.R.I.

McCain: “the progress that I’ve seen since previous visits here has been substantial and positive.’’

[EFerrari]

4. Zelaya made the same "mistakes" Aristide did.

He was popular, he was working on putting the "participatory" in the Honduran democracy, he raised the minimum wage and got some funding for schools. And his ousting was carried out very much like Aristides' except the PTB didn't take the time to develop paramilitaries in Honduras. They imported them from Colombia instead. They slimed Zelaya just as they slimed Aristide, too, in the press.

DUer magbana tried to explain the similarities to me when Honduras was happening but I didn't get it until I watched this documentary.

[Selatius]

3. I'll have to dig further, but if true, it looks like "Meet new boss, same as last boss" scenario.

It would be a sad outcome for the people of Haiti if democracy eludes them, especially in light of the massive earthquake tragedy. They need to establish a government that serves them, not pillages their wealth and sends it to foreign interests.

[EFerrari]

5. Haiti is an occupied country. They will get the government

that we want them to get.

[Selatius]

7. You're quite right, but it ultimately rests upon the US to stop meddling.

And empires do not easily let go of captive colonies, especially devastated ones that have limited means of resistance.

[EFerrari]

9. John Bracey, who teaches at UMass, gave a lecture about that

(and about the difference between the image of Haiti as cultivated in the media and the actual history of Haiti) shortly after the quake. This video is about 40 minutes. No transcript that I can find.

http://www.truveo.com/haitian-history-future-prospects/id/532861718

[Electric Monk]

6. Sean Penn is no fan of his, either. Harshly critical, in fact.

http://www.torontosun.com/entertainment/music/2010/08/06/14941476-wenn-story.html one example

I'm inclined to agree with Penn...

[Catherina]

8. Opportunist. Wolf Blitzer can keep him. n/t

[Hannah Bell]

11. The Coup Connection

How an organization financed by the U.S. government has been promoting the overthrow of elected leaders abroad


In early 2004, chaos overwhelmed Haiti. In January, a rebellion erupted against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the former slum priest who had frequently angered the United States with his leftist rhetoric. Aristide had twice been elected, but he had alienated many Haitians with his increasing demagoguery and use of violence against the opposition. Yet polls showed that Aristide remained relatively popular, so even experienced Haiti watchers were surprised when, in late February, armed militias marched on the nation’s capital while demonstrators shut down the streets. In the violence, some 100 Haitians were killed. At dawn on February 29, with the militias closing in, Aristide left Haiti on a U.S. government plane.

But did the rebellion really spring from nowhere? Maybe not. Several leaders of the demonstrations --some of whom also had links to the armed rebels -- had been getting organizational help and training from a U.S. government-financed organization. The group, the International Republican Institute (IRI), is supposed to focus on nonpartisan, grassroots democratization efforts overseas. But in Haiti and other countries, such as Venezuela and Cambodia, the institute -- which, though not formally affiliated with the GOP, is run by prominent Republicans and staffed by party insiders -- has increasingly sided with groups seeking the overthrow of elected but flawed leaders who are disliked in Washington.

In 2002 and 2003, IRI used funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to organize numerous political training sessions in the Dominican Republic and Miami for some 600 Haitian leaders. Though IRI’s work is supposed to be nonpartisan -- it is official U.S. policy not to interfere in foreign elections -- a former U.S. diplomat says organizers of the workshops selected only opponents of Aristide and attempted to mold them into a political force.

The trainings were run by IRI’s Haiti program officer, Stanley Lucas, the scion of a powerful Haitian family with long-standing animosity toward Aristide -- Amnesty International says some family members participated in a 1987 peasant massacre. “To have Lucas as your program officer sends a message to archconservatives that you’re on their side,” says Robert Maguire, a Haiti expert at Trinity College in Washington, D.C.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2004/11/coup-connection

[Electric Monk]

13. I'm sorry. What else can I do? I want to help.

[Billy Burnett]

15. The US has a (CIA) "Cuba Transition Project" up and running at UofM.

Why some DUsers support the Cuban paid lackeys of the disaster capitalists is beyond me.


Naomi Klein has it spot on.

Naomi Klein Issues Haiti Disaster Capitalism Alert: Stop Them Before They Shock Again
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/14/naomi_klein_issues_haiti_disaster_capitalism