First Baby Doc, now Aristide?

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2011/02/2011217025580425.html

"Haiti allows ex-president's return
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was Haiti's first democratically elected leader, has been in exile for seven years."

Has someone been sending out invitations?

The U.S. really REALLY doesn't want Aristide to return to Haiti. He is independent-minded, committed to social justice and hugely popular. The U.S. puppet government (President Rene Preval), no doubt under intense U.S. pressure, forbade Aristide's party, Lavalas--the majority party in Haiti--from even being on the ballot in the recent first round of the election (though Preval had initially promised the Haitian people that he would bring Aristide back--Aristide, the elected president, ousted by the Bushwhacks in 2004). Thus, 75% of Haitians didn't vote in the recent election.

The first round produced two candidates for a run-off, neither of them with much support (one of them was Preval's choice, Jude Celestin). There were big protests about election fraud (but probably the real reason for the protests was that Aristide/Lavalas was not on the ballot.) (The "framing" of the protests as against election fraud rather than as against Lavalas being excluded from the ballot, by the corpo-fascist press, set the stage for the following: )

The U.S., probably unhappy with Preval on some issue regarding the $9 billion aid that the U.S. controls, formed an election group, using the OAS name, to recount the first round. The group consisted of six people from the U.S., France and Canada and one Jamaican. The OAS has a good rep as election monitors, but this group was entirely controlled by the U.S., and was "first world" vs "third world"--notorious interferers in Haiti, the U.S. and France, and rightwing/corporate Canadian gov't. (Whatever the Jamaican thought, he/she was way outvoted.) How the U.S. got the OAS to lend their name to this, I don't know. They botched the recount. The recount was so inadequate as to be fraudulent in itself. (CEPR and others who have reviewed it say it's a joke.) This U.S. "first world" election team bumped Preval's candidate Celestin out of the race in favor of a weird guy, Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly (a singer with probable criminal--maybe "Baby Doc"--connections). The other candidate,Mirlande Manigat, is a Sorbonne-educated, former Haitian First Lady, whose platform is "capitalism with a friendly face."

At this point, Preval got pissed off and signaled Aristide that he would grant him a visa or passport. The CIA got wind of it (ahem, was listening in) and arranged for "Baby Doc" (in exile in France)--former horrible dictator--to return to Haiti. This was likely a U.S. warning to Preval and the people of Haiti that the price of Haitian independence will be another bloody tyranny or civil war. It was to make Aristide's return as difficult as possible.

The reason Aristide has waited--patiently, in exile in South Africa--is that, unlike "Baby Doc" (who entered Haiti through the U.S. military-controlled Haitian airport, on an expired visa), Aristide wants all i's dotted and t's crossed--wants an official passport or re-entry visa--when he returns--i.e., no excuse for anyone (mainly the U.S.) to turn him away. The CIA put together a group of about a thousand to 'welcome' "Baby Doc" back and to scrawl some pro-"Baby Doc" graffiti around Port au Prince. The Associated Pukes found (paid?) an "ordinary citizen" or two to say that things were not so chaotic under "Baby Doc." A hundred thousand--a million--may well greet Aristide on his return--all genuine--and any further U.S. bullshit about the election to replace (termed out) Preval will be exposed/prevented. What must happen in Haiti--as anyone with Haiti's interests at heart knows, and as CEPR recommends--is a complete re-do of the election, with the Lavalas party/Aristide on the ballot and REAL election monitors setting it up and monitoring it.

The U.S. opposes a re-do of the election. They've tried to hide it, but I'm pretty sure that Mirlande Manigat is their candidate ("capitalism with the friendly face"). They dumped Celestin out because Preval/Celestin have some power in Haiti and could have beaten her (in an election without Lavalas on the ballot). And Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly was a further threat of the return of the far rightwing/fascist tyranny.

Although Bill Clinton put Aristide back in power--after Aristide was first elected, then ousted by a rightwing military coup (for Haiti's very tiny rich elite)--he did put restrictions on Aristide aimed at creating another U.S. client state, run on "neo-liberal" lines. The Bush Junta then ousted Aristide anyway, in a brutal coup in 2004 in which thousands of Haitians were slaughtered by rightwing death squads. The result was the corrupt Preval government, which--like the Bush Junta and Katrina--was unable to cope with the earthquake, either because of incompetence or because the U.S. has used the billions in aid that it controls as a bludgeon to bully Preval (money going to U.S. corporate interests? and he balked?). (Reconstruction hasn't happened--a million Haitians are still living under tarps--not even tents--tarps. Cholera has broken out. The aid program is a disaster.) One thing the U.S. has to look out for, when they install puppets, is that puppets may have some loyalty to their people, their country and their region. And they may be capable of being insulted.

So now we have the Obama/Hillary Clinton team running things (or apparently running things), and you'd think they would support Aristide (with the "neo-liberal" restrictions). It is a very slim possibility that they do. We'll have to see what they do re Aristide's return. But my best guess--and my scenario sketched out above--is based on the fact that things have changed, since Bill Clinton put Aristide back in power. The Bush Junta here, and the current Diebold/ES&S installed Scumbag Congress, are very grave developments, indicating shackles on U.S. policy that were not there before. The Miami mafia faction of the Scumbag Congress has already met--met before Christmas--with Latin American fascists and basically called for war on Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua (all with independent, elected, leftist governments). This likely explains the Obama/Clinton shilly-shallying about the rightwing coup in Honduras, and ultimate support of the coup, back in 2009, only six months into the Obama administration. That was likely a Bush Junta-designed coup, but the Obama/Clinton team didn't seem to have any power in that situation. A freshman Puke senator, Jim De Mint (SC-Diebold), was running U.S. foreign policy in Honduras. Bill Clinton--for all his "neo-liberalism" and what I consider HUGE policy mistakes--at least supported democracy. It's not at all clear that Obama does, or, rather, it's not at all clear that Obama CAN.

Secondly, Aristide has had an in-your-face lesson on who's in charge in the U.S. as well as on the consequences of compromising on "neo-liberal" policies (basically, corporate rule, low wages, lots of poverty, privatization of public services, contentment with the country never getting anywhere, all the wealth is bled out, in exchange for shit jobs, with maybe a little expansion in the ruling class--creation of a well-fed, well-dressed, well-housed urban elite with a stake in corporate rule). Aristide is likely even more committed to independence and social justice now, than when he was first elected--and he has many more allies than when he was first elected. There are now leftist governments, where there weren't before, all over the Latin American landscape--Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay, Paraguay, Venezuela. (Venezuela was the first, and was just getting stabilized in 2004, after the failed Bush Junta-supported coup attempt in 2002. Brazil went leftist in 2003; Argentina in 2004, then the rest.)

Why weren't Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Brazil (UN peacekeepers), Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay, Paraguay, Venezuela, or any other Latin American country, included on the U.S.-run "OAS" election team for the Haiti recount (except for one person from Jamaica)? Cuz most of Latin America is now leftist and very into transparent, honest elections? This needs to be looked into.

Aristide knows all of this, now. He won't likely bend over any more. He'll return on his own terms and those of the people of Haiti. There is nobody better suited to reconstruct Haiti in a fair and progressive and non-corrupt and democratic way. That's why the U.S.--which is only nominally run by the Democrats, who are, in any case, far less democratic than they were even ten years ago--doesn't want him back.

Read between the lines of this Christian Science Monitor (gone corporate) article. Hillary speaks of the election team she put together in the third person--"We support the OAS recommendations," she says (LOL!) And the article says that Preval ain't "trusted" any more. He's been "maneuvering behind the scenes" (talking to Aristide). (It's fun reading corpo-fascist 'news' articles when you know what to look for.)

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2011/0131/Hillary-Clinton-presses-Haiti-s-Rene-Preval-to-break-election-stalemate