Hi all, I sent ths URL alone yesterday, but it seems to have vanished in the haze of my weird computer. This can be found with a bunch of links, (and many more come Monday I hope, as I submitted about 3 times as many as are there now) after it at: http://www.disinfo.com/disinfo?p=folder&title=Haiti%3A+Drug+Warriors+Are+Certi fiable Peace, Preston Haiti: Drug Warriors Are Certifiable One definition of insanity is to do something over and over again and expect different results. So why does the US keep recertifying Haiti? The US News & World Report (May 29th, 2000) reported that Armand Jean-Robert, chief of Haiti's US-trained and supported anti-drug force, fled Haiti for Miami on May 7th, 2000. Jean-Robert had been accused of stealing drug-bust cash, and "ripping off another trafficker." He is but one in an unbroken line of corrupt law enforcement and political figures to flee Haiti because of their criminal behavior. But this is only part of the story. The US has "invaded" Haiti five times (the first from 1915-35), which resulted in Haiti becaming the first US protectorate. Haiti is still the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. According to the CIA's World Fact Book, 75 percent of the population lives under the poverty level, 60 percent are unemployed, the life expectancy is 51.65 years, and only 45 percent of the country can read. >From the very start, Haiti was a tumultuous place. In the first year of independence from the French (1804), after an extremely bloody slave rebellion that "fewer than 350,000 Haitians survived," Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the first Haitian leader, ordered 20,000 white French Haitians slaughtered. Dessalines spared only a few "doctors, priests, and essential exporters," writes Bob Corbett in his history of Haiti. This brutal act gave the Western powers an excuse to ostracize and refuse to recognize Haiti as a legitimate country, treating it more like a "colony in rebellion." Little has changed. In January 2000, US Custom found the first of five cocaine hauls welded deep within the steel hulls of "Haitian" freighters on the Miami River in Florida. The drugs "passed through" Haiti from Colombia. What the mainstream press did not focus on was that the first five freighters were registered in Honduras, where Haitian expatriate Col. Joseph Michel Francois lives. Francois, a graduate of the infamous US Army's School of the Americas, is under a 13-count indictment in Miami, and the DEA has filed an extradition request for him. In 1997 Rep. Maxine Waters decried his US Government and CIA-backing this way: "Members of this House not only swore by them and protected them, while they were protecting them, Francois was building an air strip in Haiti where he could receive the drugs flown in from Colombia on that air strip and the same air strip used to fly it right back out to the United States. This was a trans-shipment point." Two Haitians were arrested in Miami suspected of masterminding the freighter operation. One, Emmanuel Thibaud, was allowed to emigrate to Miami after Aristide returned to power. When US police searched his home (January 29th, 2000), "they found documents linking him to Michel Francois," the Haiti Progres (February 16th-22nd, 2000), a Haitian newspaper published in New York City, reported. The Miami Herald claimed (February 13th, 2000) that Francois "is 'strongly suspected' to be at or near the top of the Haitian drug consortium." Explaining why the US recertified Haiti again in 2000, the Haiti Progres wrote: "Because they need the "drug war" to camouflage their real war, which is a war against any people which rejects U.S. hegemony, neoliberal doctrine, and imperialism . . . Like Frankenstein with his monster, the U.S. often has to chase after the very criminals it creates. Just as in the case of Cuba and Nicaragua, the thugs trained and equipped by the Pentagon and CIA go on to form vicious mafias, involved in drug trafficking, assassinations, and money laundering." Now US government officials can point to these ready-made villians and justify continued funding of an insane War Against Some Drugs: a covert war now against only some drug traffickers. Research by Preston Peet [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ <FONT COLOR="#000099">Life's too short to send boring email. Let SuperSig come to the rescue. </FONT><A HREF="http://click.egroups.com/1/6137/6/_/475667/_/963660262/"><B>Click Here!</B></A> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
