freedom costs money

February/2004

You may have heard in the news that Haiti is experiencing a few problems at the moment. I wonder why?

Aristide's election in 1990 was not looked upon favourably in Washington because they supported his opposition. Just over half a year later a military coup took place which brought into play a horrifying period of ‘terror’. If you are willing to look for literature on the subject you can find out all about it. Those that led the coup, together with wealthy elites, continued to enjoy help first from Bush Senior and then even more from Mr Clinton. In fact both of these leaders even approved Texaco giving much needed oil to the torturers despite the fact that this violated presidential directives. The CIA actually told Congress this was not the case even though ‘even a casual visitor’ would have noticed according to Chomsky.

By 1994 Clinton thought that the population could have a little break from being tortured because he’s nice like that and he permitted Aristide to return. This was on the understanding that he cave to the policies of the US candidate in the 1990 election who in fact received only 14% of the vote. We were told that Haiti was unable to feed its population. This was misinformation because Haitian peasants were actually quite efficient. Hence if you believe Chomsky’s argument the simple truth is that they could not compete with ‘dumped US agribusiness exports from corporations that receive a large part of their income from government subsidies.’

In much the same way as we should view political and military conflict elsewhere in the globe, no matter what you perceive the effects to be of different regime changes, it is nothing more than cowardly deception to attempt to conceal the vital part the US and its allies have played in causing humanitarian disasters. Chomsky states that ‘ever since Haiti scandalized the civilized world 200 years ago by becoming "the first free country of free men," as one anthropologist accurately described it. It has been brutally punished for this crime every since.’

WILLIAM GRAY

(Anyone interested in the subject matter discussed in this piece will, in my humble opinion, find they can arrive at a better understanding of the international political system if they read work by Chomsky Pilger and Monbiot, or simply log onto ZNet)