Haiti's Colonial Overlord

Clinton In Haiti

By ASHLEY SMITH
August 5, 2010
Courtesy Of "CounterPunch"

Amid the hoopla over Chelsea Clinton's wedding at a posh estate north of New York City, there were plenty of toasts in the media to Bill Clinton and the good works he's performed since leaving the White House.

In particular, Clinton's role in working with Haiti, both before and after the catastrophic earthquake last January, was singled out.

To the U.S. media, Clinton is a compassionate statesmen, with only the best interests of the Haitian people at heart. Particularly since this year's quake, he has been viewed as a decisive leader who can "get things done," in contrast to the country's ineffective government. Because of his role as co-chair of the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission (IHRC), Esquire magazine called Clinton "CEO of a leaderless nation," theMiami Herald repeatedly refers to him as the "czar of the recovery effort."

Ordinary Haitians have a different view. They remember Clinton as the man who, while president, demanded Haiti follow the "Plan of Death"--the neoliberal prescriptions of the IMF and World Bank that "structurally adjusted" the Haitian economy in the interests of U.S. business, at the expense of the country's peasants and poor.

Today, Haitians know Clinton as a man who wields immense power over the country's future. Esquire's description of him as the "CEO of a leaderless nation." can only be called a political Freudian slip--a CEO, after all, is concerned with profitable investments for shareholders, not meeting people's needs.

It isn't even true that Clinton can "get things done." According to the Washington Post, only 2 percent of the more than $5 billion in aid promised by the U.S. and other countries at a UN donor conference for the first 18 months of reconstruction has materialized. Clinton's IHRC has dispensed just over $500 million so far--a drop in the bucket compared to the need.

* * *

CLINTON HAS promised to "burn up the phone lines" to get world governments to fulfill their pledges. But if and when he manages to get funds for the IHRC, no one should be under any illusion that the reconstruction aid will be used in the interests of Haitian peasants and poor.

The IHRC is a colonial body that will implement the same old neoliberal measures. The U.S. spearheaded setting up the IHRC at an international conference in June. In its original design, the 26-member executive body had a majority of foreigners representing various countries and international financial institutions. Faced with protests from Haitians, the executive was reorganized so that there is now 13 Haitians and 13 foreigners. Clinton and Haitian Prime Minister Max Bellerive were selected as co-chairs.

But lest anyone mistakenly think Bellerive and the other 13 Haitians have any control over the commission, the World Bank was chosen as the trustee of the funds. On top of that, Haitian President René Préval was compelled to extend his decree of emergency powers to prevent any Haitians from overruling the IHRC's power in Haiti.

"Haiti's true government," wrote Berthony Depont, editor of the weekly left-wing paper Haiti Liberté, "has just been installed on June 17 with 26 members, all handsomely paid, at the Karibe Convention Center. There are 13 junior Haitians, all too happy to be nominated, but who have no credibility with the Haitian people. Then there are the real members of the Interim Haitian Reconstruction Commission: the foreigners."

Clinton, whatever his penchant for professing to feel Haitians' pain, will makes sure that the IHRC serves the interests of the U.S. and other powerful governments, in alliance with its allies in Haiti, the wealthy.

As the U.S. Agency for International Development proclaims unapologetically on its Web site: "U.S. foreign assistance has always had the twofold purpose of furthering America's foreign policy interests in expanding democracy and free market, while improving the lives of the citizens of the developing world."

In fact, the whole history of Haiti proves that "free-market economics" benefits U.S. multinationals and the Haitian elite, while impoverishing the masses--and that "expanding democracy" is restricted by who the U.S. government thinks should hold power.

Of course, not even Bill Clinton will claim that Haiti--the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere--has thrived in the neoliberal era. He's even admitted that U.S. demands during the 1990s that Haiti end trade restrictions against U.S. agricultural products had a devastating effect on the economy. "We made this devil's bargain on rice," Clinton said in March. "And it wasn't the right thing to do. We should have continued to work to help them be self-sufficient in agriculture."

In a recent Esquire article, he waxed lyrical about what he hoped to accomplish in Haiti. "Haitians...need the organizational structure and the support to get things done," he told the magazine. "That's what I'm trying to do: move things along. I want them to consider all their big alternatives. I want them to consider becoming a wireless country, consider becoming an energy-independent country. I want them to close their landfills, recycle everything and use the rest for energy. Wouldn't it be great if they became the first wireless nation in the world? They could, I'm telling you, they really could."

Clearly concerned that such projects could be easily dismissed as fantasies about a society where more than 10 percent of the population lives in refugee camps, he retreated later in the interview. "I don't want to be naïve," he told Esquire. "It's going to be a stretch. It'll be hard, but I'm excited about it. Enough so that after a couple of heart incidents and being sixty-three years old, I am prepared to spend three years on it. They want the right things for their country."

However, when you look behind Clinton's fantasizing and his dilettantish commitment of three whole years to Haiti's future, the IHRC plan is, in fact, the same old plan--with some public relations bells and whistles--that Clinton and his friend Paul Collier, an Oxford professor and former World Bank official, came up with in 2009.

Collier's blueprint for Haiti is standard neoliberalism--with emphases on pushing sweatshop industries, reorienting Haiti's desperate peasants toward producing export crops, developing the country's beaches and historical sites for tourism, and investing in infrastructure to service all these projects, none of which will benefit workers and the poor.

* * *

CLINTON'S NEOLIBERAL plans for Haiti will work out nicely for the vulture capitalists who have descended on Haiti to exploit the earthquake catastrophe. "Haiti has become the new El Dorado in terms of people seeking opportunities to make a quick buck," Jean-Robert Lafortune, president of the Haitian American Grassroots Coalition, told The Miami Herald.

In March, the International Peace Operations Association held a conference for private security firms like Triple Canopy to contract their services to Haiti's corporate elite. As Patrick Elie, former minister of defense in Haiti, told the Inter Press Service: "[T]hese guys are like vultures coming to grab the loot over this disaster...[M]oney that might have been injected into the Haitian economy is just going to be grabbed by these companies, and I'm sure they're not the only mercenary companies."

Meanwhile, textile manufacturers are lining up to take advantage of IHRC's commitment to sweatshop labor--and palm off the exploitation of impoverished workers as humanitarianism.

As Time magazine reported, "Gap is planning to roll out its own made-in-Haiti line. The company, which owns Old Navy and is already responsible for 4,000 Haitian textile jobs, may even set up special Haiti sections in some stores. 'Customers generally don't care about country of origins,' says Art Peck, a senior Gap executive. 'We think they will with Haiti.'"

In the agricultural sector, USAID and Monsanto are collaborating on the misnamed project WINNER--a "benevolent" program that will, in fact, further erode Haiti's food sovereignty.

Monsanto--in what one of their executives calls a "fabulous Easter gift"--donated 475 tons of hybrid seeds at a cost to itself of $4 million. The seeds are supposed to be distributed to Haitian peasant farmers, but the country's social movements have long opposed the use of Monsanto's genetically modified products. Farmers are vowing to burn the Monsanto seeds, which are coated with pesticides and likely not adapted to Haitian diverse soil conditions.

In protest against WINNER, thousands of peasants marched in Hinche on July 4 and burned Monsanto seeds. "With friends like Monsanto and its governmental allies, who needs enemies," said Benoit Griouard of Union Paysanne. "This so-called donation is an attack on Haitian farmers and the future of their local seeds." Another leader, Chavannes Jean-Baptiste from the Mouvman Peyizan Papay declared Monsanto's seeds "a gift of death. It's an attack on peasant agriculture, on the farmers, on biodiversity, on native seeds, on what remains of our environment in Haiti."

In perhaps the most bizarre example of disaster capitalism, the Vietnamese Army's telecommunications company Viettel bought Haiti's last state-owned company, Teleco, for $59 million.

Before he sold it, Préval fired hundreds of workers and invested precious funds that could have been used for the benefit of Haitians in projects that would make Teleco fit for privatization.

* * *

MEANWHILE, forces that claim to be a voice for the Haitian people against business and governments are getting a piece of the pie in the aftermath of the quake.

With the exception of a few, like Partners in Health, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have used the Haitian tragedy to accumulate vast sums of money that they haven't spent to aid the Haitian masses. And when they have, their efforts have been haphazard, uncoordinated and unaccountable to the Haitian people or government.

The Philanthropy News Digest reported in May that "roughly $14.9 billion, or $37,000 per displaced family, has been donated for Haiti earthquake relief efforts to date, much of it raised by the American Red Cross, CARE, Catholic Relief Services, the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund and the Clinton Foundation Haiti Fund.

"The Red Cross, for example, has raised $444 million and spent about 25% of that amount; CARE has raised $34.4 million and spent about 16 percent of that; CRS has raised $165 million and spent 8 percent; and the Clinton Bush Fund and the Clinton Foundation have raised $52 million combined, of which 13% has been spent."

Not only have many NGOs and charities spent only a fraction of what they raised off Haiti, but they also display what the Disaster Accountability Project calls a "shocking lack of transparency." According to the project's study of 197 organization that received donations for Haiti, only six provided factual situation reports, while 128 others, had no reports but only emotional appeals and anecdotes.

The Red Cross has come under particular fire. Outraged after a fact-finding trip to Haiti, Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz attacked the Red Cross, saying, "We were actually pretty struck by the fact that we didn't see the Red Cross anywhere at all."

After hearing the Red Cross' claim that it was holding onto the bulk of donations around Haiti for long-term projects, Wasserman Schultz later softened her criticisms. But the truth is that NGOs like the Red Cross shouldn't be rationing funds in such an emergency; Haitians need money for reconstruction right now.

The stinginess of the NGOs has angered Haitians. Ruth Derilus, who worked for an NGO with a multimillion-dollar budget after the 2008 floods in Gonaïves, told theNation magazine she would never work for one again because "of all the money they send here, only 10 percent actually makes it to the ground. The rest is spent on foreign experts, hotels, car rentals and hotel conferences."

Instead of helping to solve the crisis, the NGOs are making money off Haiti and restricting aid. Meanwhile, the U.S. and other powerful governments use the NGOs to effectively bypass the Haitian state, further weakening its role in the country. Thus, the IHRC will only spend 6.6 percent of its budget through the Haitian state--the rest will go to private corporations and NGOs.

This is why many Haitians, as well as others in the Caribbean who have had similar experiences, have denounced the NGOs for undermining Haitian democracy.

After a meeting of the Caribbean Community, Roosevelt Skerrit, the prime minister of Dominica, stated, "With respect to the NGOs operating out of Haiti, we called on the UN secretary general to do all that he can to bring some level of order to the situation, because while we speak about maintaining democracy in Haiti, we can't at the same time be affording NGOs to undermine the democratic institutions in Haiti...We call on the international institutions and government to cease and desist from putting resources into the NGOs.

From celebrity political figures like Bill Clinton, to the U.S. and other powerful governments, to corporations and NGOs, the forces and institutions that could make a difference in the lives of poor Haitians are putting other interests first. Haitians endured the disaster of the earthquake. Now they are facing the man-made disaster of neoliberalism.

Ashley Smith writes for the Socialist Worker, where this originally appeared. He can be reached at: ashley05401@yahoo.com

Militarization Of Central America & The Caribbean

The U.S. Military Moves Into Costa Rica

By Mark Vorpahl

July 19, 2010

Courtesy Of "Global Research"

Nestled between Panama to its south and Nicaragua to its north, Costa Rica is a Central American nation roughly the size of Rhode Island.

If another nation were to send Rhode Island a force of 7,000 troops, 200 helicopters, and 46 warships in an effort to eradicate drug trafficking, it is doubtful that the residents of Rhode Island would consider this offer "on-the-level." Such a massive military force could hardly be efficiently used to combat drug cartels. The only logical conclusion is that the nation whose troops now are occupying this other country had another agenda in mind that it didn't want to share.

In early July, by a vote of 31 to 8, the Costa Rican Congress approved the U.S. bringing into their nation the same military force described above, justified with the same dubious "war on drugs" rationale. According to the agreement, the military forces are supposed to leave Costa Rica by the end of 2010. This begs the question, however, if such an over the top display of military muscle is needed now to combat the drug cartels, what will be done in the next few months to make their presence unnecessary? The history of such U.S. military deployments around the world suggests a more credible outcome than what the agreement states. Once the U.S. moves such massive forces into a country, they rarely move them out.

When push comes to shove, the political machinery in Costa Rica is subservient to U.S. government and corporate interests. Nevertheless, there are many in Costa Rica who are declaring that the agreement is a violation of their national sovereignty and is unconstitutional. (In 1948 Costa Rica abolished its army, which was sanctioned in its constitution.) Legislator Luis Fishman has vowed to challenge the decision of the Congress in the courts.

Shifting Strategy and Tactics

The buildup of U.S. armed forces in Costa Rica is part of an escalating pattern that indicates a shifting of strategy and tactics for the U.S. in controlling what the Monroe Doctrine infamously described as the U.S.'s "backyard" — that is, all of Latin America. Since the U.S. government inspired covert coup d’etats and political reversals of popular governments and/or movements in Guatemala, Brazil, Chile, Nicaragua, and El Salvador in previous decades, U.S. rulers had figured they had things stitched up to their liking in Latin America. The political elites in Latin America were uniformly in the pockets of the U.S. corporate empire and appeared to be more or less in control of their people. They commonly outlawed strikes and at times even trade unions, eliminated minimum wage laws, and gave enormous tax breaks to U.S. corporations.

Therefore, the U.S. Empire builders could use their political and economic might alone to subjugate these neo-colonies to a very profitable neoliberal agenda. This agenda included allowing U.S. corporations easy access to pillage these nations’ public sectors through privatization, letting multi-national corporations overrun these nations’ local markets and farms through the elimination of trade barriers, and increasing the exploitation of their workers and the devastation of their natural resources by tossing out national labor and environmental standards. Because of the profits enjoyed by a few as a result of these measures, they carried the day, though they, in turn, created a simmering spirit of rebellion in the semi-colonies' peasantry and workers that would inevitably find expression.

As the U.S. began to set its sights on and send its resources to other parts of the world, most notably the Middle East and Asia, the web they had wrapped around Latin America began to unravel. This was most apparent in Venezuela where a U.S.-backed coup attempt in April of 2002 failed because of the massive mobilizing of the Venezuelan people in defense of their democratic rights. All subsequent attempts of the Venezuelan oligarchy, in collusion with the U.S. State Department, to get rid of Chavez resulted in their humiliation because of the constant support and organizing of the country’s lower classes. It became apparent to the U.S. ruling class that they could no longer rely on the Venezuelan oligarchy, which had lost direct control over the political situation. What is more, the popular upsurge witnessed in Venezuela in the past decade, opened up floodgates for anti-imperialist organizing across the continent, resulting in the election of a number of left-wing presidents.

Not only was the neoliberal agenda of the U.S. being blocked, an alternative to the U.S. Free Trade policies was being set up. The Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America and the Caribbean (ALBA), which was initiated by Venezuela and Cuba, began to build a trading block based on exchange according to different nations' needs rather than U.S. corporate profits. While ALBA needs to be more substantially developed in order to fulfill its promise, especially in regards to organizing grassroots control to determine its priorities, it is a challenge to U.S. corporate and political dominance in the region.

U.S. Military Moves

As a result, the U.S. government began to shift its reliance from solely economic and political means to control Latin America towards taking military measures, even while engaged in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. What have been some of these measures?

In 2006 the U.S. conducted military exercises off the coast of Venezuela called "Operation Partnership of the Americas." This exercise involved four ships, 60 fighter planes, and 6,500 U.S. troops.

In 2006 the U.S. State Department classified the islands of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao, with their military bases jointly contracted to Holland and the U.S., as "The Third Frontier of the United States." U.S. aircraft carriers, war ships, combat planes, Black Hawk helicopters, nuclear submarines, and thousands of troops began to build up in Curacao in particular. In 2009 a U.S. military plane was intercepted in Venezuelan airspace that had flown from Curacao's base.

In 2008 the U.S. reactivated the Fourth Fleet to patrol Caribbean waters. This fleet had been out of commission since 1950. Now it operates with the potential of acting as a floating base for the U.S. to conduct military strikes throughout Central and South America.

In 2009 the U.S. made a deal with Colombia to build up its military personal in seven bases, from 250 to 800 American troops with 600 civilian contractors, effectively taking control over these installations. This was widely denounced throughout Latin America as an action aimed at intimidating Venezuela. In December of that year a U.S. drone plane flying from one of these Colombian bases violated Venezuelan airspace.

From 2009 to 2010 the U.S. worked behind the scenes to legitimize a military coup in Honduras against lawfully elected President Zelaya, who had aligned the nation with ALBA. Part of the U.S.'s motivation behind its actions was to maintain control of Soto Cano's Airbase, with its 550 U.S. troops and 650 U.S. and Honduran civilians. In the 1980's the U.S. had used this base for a training ground and launching pad for the Contra terrorists in Nicaragua and El Salvadorian death squads opposed to the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). There is good reason for concern that this Airbase will again be used for similar operations today.

In 2009 the U.S. and Panama agreed to open up two naval bases in Panama, which will be the first time U.S. military forces will be based in this nation since 1999.

War On Drugs?

Most of these measures have been justified on the grounds of combating drug trafficking, including the military buildup in Costa Rica. However, they have not curtailed this problem at all. Such U.S. military buildups have generally been accompanied by an increase in drug trafficking, as has happened in both Columbia and Afghanistan. Based on this record it can only be concluded that the "War on Drugs" rationale is a red herring for public relations consumption, not the actual motivation.

This military build up in Costa Rica is the latest in a series of moves the U.S. has made in Latin America that seeks to use threats and arms to reverse the strength of popular anti-imperialist forces across the region. The U.S. is playing with the possibility of erupting a continental conflagration for the sake of corporate profits.

While it is doubtful that the U.S. wants to directly engage in a military conflict with, most likely, Venezuela right now, preparations for this possibility are being made. What is more likely in the short term is that the U.S. military will use its forces to engage in sabotage and intimidation in hopes of reversing support for the nations aligned with ALBA. It is also very possible that the U.S. military will help to support proxy armies, such as Colombia's, in military conflicts that align with U.S. interests. However, this is a dangerous game. Even in the short term, the U.S. ruling class may drag the nation into another direct conflict, in spite of their intentions, that could spread to involve numerous other nations.

Peace and International Solidarity

While U.S. workers are suffering from unemployment, insufficient health care, drastic cuts to education and social services, as well as environmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico created by the Obama governmental collusion with BP, the priorities of the U.S. ruling class are elsewhere. They are more concerned with pouring money into military buildups that threaten war. The target of such a war or wars would be the popular working class movements in Latin America, whose only crime has been to struggle to liberate themselves from super exploitation and political repression. It is the same economic and political elite in the U.S. that are denying U.S. workers what is rightfully theirs that are opposing the efforts of workers and peasants throughout the continent to empower themselves.

It is the task of the anti-war movement not only to oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also to prevent future U.S. wars in Latin America. Wherever anti-war activists seek to mobilize people against war, they should also seek to educate about the U.S. empire's military moves in Latin America.

Furthermore, it will require international solidarity to combat what the U.S. elite is doing in Central and South America. There was recently an event that could go some way towards preparing this solidarity. In Sanare, Venezuela, from June 21 - 25, a series of meetings were held entitled "Ecuentro of the Americas: Resisting Militarization and Promoting a Culture of Peace." It consisted of delegates of organizations from 19 nations across the continent, including School of the Americas (SOA) Watch of the U.S. You can read more about this at http://www.soaw.org/.

Mark Vorpahl is a union steward as well as an anti-war and Latin American Solidarity activist. He can be reached at Portland@workerscompass.org.

 Global Research Articles by Mark Vorpahl