The Clintons see Haiti only as a gold mine by Wayne Madsen

The Clintons see Haiti only as a gold mine

by Wayne Madsen
Another Haitian first round presidential election, held on October 25, has served to be another exercise in rampant vote tabulation fraud. Dr. Maryse Narcisse, the candidate of former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s political party, Fanmi Lavalas, has claimed that recent election was based on massive fraud by the Haitian government. The two people who benefit the most from Haitian election fraud and the continuation of lackeys of the United States as presidents of Haiti are Bill and Hillary Clinton.

In 2010, current president Michel Martelly claimed that his third place finish against the government-backed candidate in the first-round was the result of fraud. Martelly’s challenge was successful and he was moved up to second place finisher and in the final round he was elected president. In the most recent first round election, Martelly’s handpicked successor, Jovenal Moise, was said to have led with 32.8 percent of the vote, followed by Jude Celestin, backed by former president Rene Preval, with 25.2 percent. Third place finisher, Moise Jean-Charles, who is very popular in Haiti, was locked out of the final round.

The Clintons will do everything in their power to prevent Aristide loyalists from becoming president of Haiti. Aristide's anti-globalization policies are a direct threat to the Clintons' massive investments in Haiti.

Even though Mr. Clinton sent U.S. troops to Haiti in 1994 to restore the elected president Aristide, a Roman Catholic Marxist-oriented “liberation theology” priest who was overthrown in a September 1991 coup, Clinton’s 1994 military operation “Uphold Democracy” could be renamed “Operation Uphold the Clintons’ Wealth.” Clinton would soon double cross Aristide after it became clear that the Haitian president’s new party, Fanmi Lavalas, was heading toward the same left progressivism as Hugo Chavez’s Fifth Republic Movement, which was victorious in 1999. Clinton forced Haiti to undergo painful World Bank-imposed austerity measures, a virtual death knell for the hemisphere’s poorest nation.

In 1996, Preval, to whom Clinton took an immediate liking because of his commitment to privatize Haiti’s state-owned enterprises, was elected president to succeed Aristide. Aristide supporters in parliament clashed with the Preval loyalists. In 1999, Preval dissolved the parliament and ruled by decree for the remaining year he had in office. Preval’s actions were supported by the phony “pro-democracy” Clinton who, in 1999, was busy trying to restore his political capital after his impeachment by the House of Representatives in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, backed Preval’s unconstitutional actions.

In 2000, Aristide ran again for president of Haiti. The U.S. State Department, under Clinton’s longtime consigliere Madeleine Albright, backed Haiti’s opposition in boycotting the presidential vote, which clearly showed that turnout was over 60 percent and that Aristide won with over 92 percent of the vote.

After Aristide was overthrown in a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency-inspired and planned coup in 2004, Clinton ecstatically danced on the political grave of Aristide, who was exiled first to the Central African Republic and then to South Africa. In 2009, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who is owned and operated by the U.S. government, appointed Bill Clinton as the UN Special Envoy to Haiti. Clinton ensured that the populist opposition loyal to Aristide, the man he helped regain office after the 1991 military coup, remain suppressed. Aristide was anathema to Clinton’s plans to squeeze every imaginable profit from the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.

Clinton was able to use the “peacekeeping” United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) as personal centurions to ensure that Clinton’s political and business cronies were not threatened by the populist forces of Aristide, who returned from exile to Haiti in 2011, and his Lavalas party. MINUSTAH forces targeted, and continue to target, Aristide forces in brutal attacks. Perhaps in keeping with the spirit of the sordid sexual deviancy history of the UN Special Envoy Clinton, MINUSTAH forces in Haiti were accused of various sexual crimes, including Uruguayan forces gang raping a Haitian teenage boy, a Nepalese soldier torturing to death a 16-year old Haitian boy, Pakistani officers raping a 14-year old mentally challenged Haitian boy, and Sri Lankan troops raping Haitian children. Neither Bill nor Hillary Clinton ever mentioned these outrageous actions while the U.S. president served as UN Special Envoy. Topping off these MINUSTAH crimes was the introduction of cholera into Haiti by Nepalese troops.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried every trick in the book to prevent Aristide’s return to Haiti, including having President Obama apply pressure on South African president Jacob Zuma. These efforts failed. Aristide and his wife made a triumphant return to Haiti on March 18, 2011.

A year before Aristide’s return, in 2010, things got much worse for Haiti and Mr. Clinton was there to strangle the nation to an even greater degree. The 2010 earthquake decimated Haiti and killed some 300,000 people and left the country’s infrastructure in tatters. President Barack Obama, in a body blow to Haiti, Obama asked Clinton and former President George W. Bush, the president responsible for the 2004 coup against Aristide, to join Bill Clinton in Haiti relief efforts. 

Bill Clinton used the devastating Haitian earthquake, and, ironically, George W. Bush, to line his own pockets and those of his wife, brother-in-law, and other cronies with quake relief money.

Mr. Clinton launched the following high-tech appeal on the web site of his William J. Clinton Foundation: "Text 'HAITI' to '20222' and $10 will be given to the Clinton Foundation's Haiti Relief Fund, charged to your cell phone bill." Clinton also solicited for donations of up to $1000 for the Clinton Foundation's Haiti Relief Fund. Most of the millions of dollars Clinton and Bush raised in Haiti relief never made their way to the Haitian people but into the pockets of the Clinton family and their cronies in Haiti and elsewhere. The Clinton aid money that did reach Haiti was siphoned off to benefit not only Haiti’s wealthy elite but also wealthy businessmen from the neighboring Dominican Republic who were moving their operations into Haiti.

The CIA-linked U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and members of the Arkansas Rice Growers Association (ARGA), the latter political cronies of the Clintons, wreaked havoc on Haiti's once thriving rice growing business. Once a net exporter of highly-nutritional rice, a combination of USAID policies and one-sided Clinton-era trade deals destroyed the Haitian rice industry and made the country dependent on expensive and non-nutritional genetically-engineered bleached white rice from Arkansas agri-businesses. In 2008, the soaring price of rice worldwide and price-fixing by U.S. agri-businesses linked to Clinton resulted in food riots breaking out in Haiti. By 2010, the time of the quake, Haiti was already an economic basket case.

Just like old King Leopold, who prized his personal country Congo because of its immense mineral wealth, particularly diamonds and gold, the Clintons became highly invested in Haiti’s emerging gold mining industry. The Clintons’ investments in Haiti, which had long been protected by MINUSTAH, would soon be guarded by an Israeli company, HLSI, the vice president of which, Eva Peled, a former officer in the Israel Defense Force, also happened to be the chief executive officer of Geomines and vice president of the Mitrelli Group.

In October 2015, HLSI signed an agreement with Haiti’s government to provide land, air, and sea border security for Haiti. The Geomines/Mitrelli team are major investors in Haitian gold mining operations. To ensure it gained full access into Haiti, the Mitrelli Group lavished generous donations on the Clinton Foundation. One of Geomines partners in the Haiti mining operations, VCS Mining of Delaware, named Hillary Clinton’s brother, Tony Rodham, to its advisory board in 2013. Rodham received generous stock options in VCS that stand to make him millions of dollars if VCS strikes gold. VCS Mining’s president, Angelo Viard, has also contributed generously to the Clinton Foundation, as well as to Democratic candidates, including his advisory board’s newest member’s sister, Hillary Clinton. VCS just happened to have been awarded two gold mining permits by the Martelly government, the first issued by Haiti in more than five decades.

Haiti’s new private “army,” the Israeli firm HLSI, touts its capability to find land mines. However, the same thermal imaging technology can be used to find minerals like gold and diamonds. Hence, HLSI is concentrating its “security” efforts around Haiti’s gold mining operations.

Haiti is sensitive to the presence of Israelis in the country. Some of Haiti’s earliest slave owners were Jews, such as the Gradisse family of Cap-Haitien and Gonaives and Simon Isaac Henriquez Moron of Grand’ Anse, Haiti. Israel also secretly supplied weapons to the repressive dictatorships of “Papa Doc” Francois Duvalier and his son, “Baby Doc” Jean-Clause Duvalier. One of Haiti’s richest businessmen, Gilbert Bigio, a Syrian Jew who is also Israel’s honorary consul in Haiti, is more committed to helping Israel than his native Haiti. It was the Haitian elite, individuals like Bigio, who benefited from Bill Clinton’s earthquake relief money.

Supplementing the HLSI security protection for Clinton/Israeli business investments in Haiti are the armed guards led by Martelly’s son, Olivier Martelly. These armed thugs, reminiscent of the dreaded Duvalier-era Tonton Macoutes, are known as the “Galil Gang” because of the Israeli Galil guns they carry. In September 2015, Olivier was reportedly arrested by federal authorities in Miami on drug smuggling charges. However, the younger Martelly was said to have been quietly released after a flurry of phone calls were made that, according to Haitian opposition sources, may have involved pressure exerted by Bill and Hillary Clinton on the Obama Justice Department.

What Bush Did to Haiti

By David Swanson
January 18, 2010

Editor’s Note: As much as the U.S. government has touted its love of democracy, the affection often has been conditional, based not on the will of a nation’s population but on the elected leader’s acceptance of American economic and political dictates.

No place has that been more true than in Haiti where American-favored dictators like the Duvaliers were long tolerated while popularly chosen leaders, such as Jean-Bertrand Aristide, found American officials siding with anti-democratic thugs, as David Swanson notes regarding the 2004 coup:

If a group of dedicated scholars, attorneys, journalists, and activists had tried to generate a comprehensive list of impeachable offenses committed by George W. Bush as President, one of them might have read something like this:

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In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed," has both personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, caused the United States of America to kidnap, imprison, intimidate, coerce, threaten, confine, abduct, and carry away the elected, constitutional President of Haiti, and his wife, a U.S citizen, in violation of United States statutes, to wit:

--President Bush, both personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, prevented the security contractors working for Haiti's elected, constitutional government led by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from receiving reinforcements at a time when Haiti's constitutional government was under attack. The removal of the security contractors facilitated the kidnapping of President Aristide:

On Feb. 17, 2004, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell defended President Aristide as the "free and fairly elected President of Haiti."

Referring to insurgents who brutally attacked police stations and other government building over the previous weeks, Secretary Powell further stated that the United States "cannot buy into a proposition that says the elected President must be forced out of office by thugs and those who do not respect law and are bringing terrible violence to the Haitian people."

Yet, on Feb. 25, Secretary Powell issued a threat to President Aristide, telling the press: "whether or not Aristide is able to effectively continue as President is something he will have to examine carefully in the interests of the Haitian people."

On Feb. 28, Powell called former Rep. Ron Dellums, who had been engaged as a lobbyist in Washington by the Haitian government. Powell informed Dellums that the insurgents were going to attack Port-au-Prince the next day (Feb. 29), and that the United States would do nothing to interfere with their plans.

On Feb. 28, a senior State Department official told CNN that the "international community" is "putting pressure on Aristide to live up to his responsibilities and to think hard about his future," which implied more pressure for President Aristide to step down. The CNN article also reported that "privately the United States continues to distance itself from Aristide and suggests it might be time for him to step down."

Timothy Carney, who was appointed by President Bush to run Iraq's Ministry of Minerals and Mines in 2003 and coordinator of Iraq reconstruction in January 2007, announced to the press that "Aristide is toast. He's gone. The only question is whether he goes out in a pine box or on an airplane."

These statements contradicted the earlier statements of the Secretary of State, which recognized Aristide as the democratically elected President of Haiti and which blamed the rebel groups for the violence gripping the country.

On Feb. 28, White House spokesman Scott McClellan stated, "Aristide's own actions have called into question his fitness to govern Haiti. We urge him to examine his position carefully."

Also, on Feb. 28, the Steele Foundation, a U.S. company that had been providing private security services to the Haitian government, informed President Aristide that the U.S. government had asked it to withdraw all of its personnel from Haiti.

The Steele Foundation also told President Aristide that the U.S. government was blocking the Steele Foundation's efforts to bring to Haiti additional personnel needed to protect the President. Later that day, the Steele Foundation informed President Aristide that without the additional personnel, the Foundation would not be able to protect the President or his wife.

--President Bush, both personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, misrepresented the immediacy of the threat against President Aristide, and informed him that U.S. forces in the country would not help either the President or his constitutional government:

On Feb. 28, members of the U.S. Foreign Service informed President Aristide that rebel forces under the command of Guy Philippe, a U.S.-trained former army and police officer, were less than 50 miles outside Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince.

The diplomats informed President Aristide that Philippe's forces would attack the next day. At the time, Philippe and his soldiers were in Cap-Haitian, at the far northern end of Haiti, and could not have reached Port-au-Prince for several days.

President Aristide was told that if he remained in Port-au-Prince, the United States would not provide any assistance when the expected attack by the insurgents occurred, and that they expected that the insurgents would kill him, his wife and many of his supporters.

That night, the U.S. Deputy Charge de Mission (DCM) in Haiti, Luis Moreno, accompanied by a contingent of U.S. troops, met with President Aristide.

Moreno reiterated the expectation that an attack by the insurgents was imminent and the promise that the U.S. would not intervene to protect President Aristide or his supporters. He then informed President Aristide that if he left at that moment, the United States would provide aircraft for him to leave, but only if he provided the United States with a letter of resignation.

President Aristide, at all times, publicly and privately, insisted that he would remain in office to serve out his constitutional term. But he conferred with U.S. Ambassador to Haiti James Foley and DCM Moreno about ways of avoiding further violence in Port-au-Prince.

--President Bush, acting through his agents and subordinates, forced President Aristide onto an unmarked U.S. plane that filed a false flight plan, and flew him against his will to the Central African Republic.

Early in the morning of Feb. 29, at Moreno's request, Aristide agreed to go with a U.S. escort to a location where he could appear on television to appeal for calm.

The escort that arrived at President Aristide's house consisted of heavily armed, uniformed members of the U.S. Armed Forces traveling in a convoy. The escorts took President Aristide and his wife from his house, and instead of taking him to a television studio, took him to the Port-au-Prince airport.

The Steele Foundation security contractors protecting President Aristide were told to plan for a move to the U.S. Embassy where President Aristide would make a TV broadcast. Then minutes before they left President Aristide's residence, they were told they were going to the airport and that they would be leaving with him on the plane.

An unmarked white aircraft, with a U.S. flag, had been flown in by the U.S. government, and sat on the airport runway According to a customs declaration at a refueling stop, the aircraft was owned or operated by Technilink, and was registered in the U.S.A, registration number N145CA.

Haiti's national airport was secured by U.S. soldiers. President Aristide reported that DCM Moreno forced him to sign a letter and board the plane.

President Aristide claims that the statement that he signed was not a resignation letter, that he did not intend to resign – that it included a conditional statement, "if I am obliged to leave in order to avoid bloodshed. ..."

The United States Government reported this letter as a resignation, to the U.S. public, to the United Nations and to the Organization of American States even though the Creole expert the government asked to translate it, Professor Bryant Freeman of the University of Kansas, concluded that the statement was not a resignation letter.

Uniformed and heavily-armed members of the U.S. armed forces boarded the plane along with President Aristide. They changed into civilian clothes after boarding. Nineteen members of the Steele Foundation security detail also boarded the plane, although they were taking direction not from President Aristide, but from officials of the United States.

Also on board were President Aristide's wife, Mildred Trouillot Aristide, a U.S. citizen, and two Haitian security officials.

The plane left Port-au-Prince at about 6 AM on Feb. 29. Once placed on the aircraft, President Aristide and his wife, who was a U.S. citizen, were kept incommunicado by U.S. military personnel, even though the plane was equipped with faxes, satellite telephones, and other means of communication.

The passengers were forced to keep the shutters on the aircraft closed at all times. They were denied the right to leave the aircraft when it landed in Antigua and thereafter when it refueled.

The operators of the aircraft provided the Antiguan government a fraudulent customs declaration that stated there were no passengers on board, that the flight had originated in "Guantanamo Bay," and that there had been no intermediate stops. No destination was listed.

Neither President Aristide nor his wife was told by the U.S. military personnel where the aircraft was going or when they would land. They were kept as prisoners on the aircraft and were only told a short time before the aircraft landed that the Central African Republic was their country of destination.

When the unmarked plane landed at the airport in Bangui, Central Africa Republic, it was met by French soldiers, who were based in the Republic. Officials of the Central African Republic informed President Aristide's lawyer that they were in consultation with both French and United States officials about keeping President Aristide in the country, and that they were doing it as a "favor" for those countries.

President Aristide was kept against his will in the Central African Republic. He was not allowed to leave his lodging on the grounds of the Presidential Palace without government permission and an escort, and he was not allowed to speak on the telephone after he made a few calls explaining what had happened to him, which Central African Republic officials called "regrettable” statements.

President Aristide was kept there for two weeks, until a mission led by U.S. Rep.Maxine Waters flew to the country and negotiated his release with the President of the Central African Republic, Francis Bozize.

--President Bush's kidnapping of President Aristide and his wife violated U.S. law:

Under 18 U.S.C. section 112, it is a criminal offense to imprison, intimidate, coerce, or threaten an "Internationally Protected Person." The statute's definition of "Internationally Protected Person" includes both President Aristide and his wife, Mildred Trouillot Aristide.

The actions by President Bush and his agents and subordinates, including Secretary Powell, Ambassador Foley and DCM Moreno, included imprisonment, intimidation, coercion and threats within the statute. The statute penalizes such illegal conduct with prison sentences up to ten years.

The statute confers jurisdiction for these crimes to U.S. courts, because the offenders were nationals of the United States, and were afterward found within the United States.

Under 18 U.S.C. section 1201, it is a criminal offense to unlawfully confine, kidnap, abduct, or carry away an "Internationally Protected Person." The statute's definition of "Internationally Protected Person" includes both President Aristide and his wife, Mildred Trouillot Aristide. …

The statute penalizes such illegal conduct with prison sentences of up to life in prison. …

In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and Commander in Chief, and subversive of constitutional government, to the prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

Wherefore, President George W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office.

David Swanson is the author of the new book Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book. [This article previously appeared at Afterdowningstreet.org.]

U.S. troops in Haiti to prevent Aristide's return (and other dirty secrets)

President Obama, in keeping with his CIA lineage, has permitted the Pentagon under Robert Gates to take charge of the humanitarian relief efforts in Haiti. As Cuban and Venezuelan field hospitals were already rendering first aid and trauma care to Haitians injured in the mega-quake, Obama was gathered at a White House photo op with Vice President Joe Biden and other Cabinet officers to state that U.S. military reconnaissance aircraft would fly over Haiti to assess the situation from the air. A U.S. P-3 Orion spy plane from Comalapa air base in El Salvador was dispatched to conduct the surveillance operation, an act that was already being accomplished by earth satellites, the images of which were available on Google Maps.

As Obama was garnering praise from such sycophantic White House outlets as the largely-discredited Washington Post, an 37-person Icelandic search-and-rescue team was pulling trapped earthquake victims from the rubble of collapsed buildings in Port-au-Prince. Iceland, a nation bankrupted by Obama's banker pals on Wall Street and in the City of London, was able to react in a way that the slumbering and oafish dying super-power, the United States, could not -- with action aimed at providing immediate assistance to the Haitian people.

Obama's generals and admirals, who are mostly more concerned about their appearance than in taking charge and moving out, were still scratching their heads about where to land the U.S. Marines and 82nd Airborne. In fact, military aircraft carrying weapons and other war supplied crowded the airport aprons at Port-au-Prince airport that could be used by planes from other countries carrying much-needed food, water, and medical supplies. Argentine doctors already on the scene in Haiti complained that they were running out of simple sewing kits being used as stitches for the injured who had undergone surgery.

When U.S. Special Operations forces hit the ground at Port-au-Prince airport they pointed their weapons at desperate Haitians at the airport perimeter who wanted help not a gun pointed in their faces. Russia, Spain, Mexico, Chile, and Guatemala were rushing in food and water for Haiti.

Meanwhile, Obama was phoning former President George W. Bush to ask for his a former President Bill Clinton to launch a fund drive for Haitian earthquake relief. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was partly behind engineering the 2004 coup that deposed democratically-elected Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, attended a Haitian relief fundraiser at a Washington hotel called "W." The symbology could not have been worse -- it was Bush who showed the world that he was totally disinterested in the 2004 Asian earthquake and tsunami and hurricane Katrina in 2005 that decimated New Orleans and surrounding areas.

Apparently, the so-called media-savvy Obama failed to realize the revolting nature of asking Bush to do anything related to Haiti when people remembered his lack of action over Katrina. Bodies of African-Americans floating in the streets of New Orleans became juxtaposed with the bodies of Afro-Haitians piling up in the streets of Port-au-Prince. But, of course, Obama is the "Max Headroom" of America's political leadership -- a talking head -- whose rhetorical flourishes speak louder than principles or concrete action.

Aristide, from an exile in South Africa imposed by the United States, France, and Canada, vowed to return to Haiti to be with his people in their time of stress and despair. Aristide, a former Roman Catholic priest, served the people of the Haitian slum of La Saline and he understands best the plight of his people. On the other hand, Rene Preval, the U.S. stooge who was placed in power twice by the CIA and the U.S. Southern Command to replace Aristide, once in a fraudulent election [Preval won in 1995 with 88 percent of the vote in a 25 percent voter turnout] and the other in a coup, could only complain to CNN's Sanjay Gupta about not having any place to sleep for the night, "I cannot live in the palace. I cannot live in my own house, because the two collapsed."

Preval has been reaping all sorts of "free trade" deals that caused Haiti's agrarian population to stream into Port-au-Prince to work in the sweat shops heralded as "progress" by the likes of George Soros and his gang of thieves on Wall Street. Because of Port-au-Prince's swelled population of sweat shop workers, the death count from the earthquake will be much higher as the result of collapsed tenements that housed more people than they were designed for.

Dr. Gupta, who was Obama's first choice to be Surgeon-General of the United States, was more interested in using dying Haitians in makeshift hospitals as stage props for CNN's ratings than in rendering medical assistance to the injured. Imagine, being one of the few doctors available to the severely injured and breaking away to go on camera and tell some old fool like Larry King or some Israeli agent of influence like Wolf Blitzer about how awful the situation is in Haiti.

However, Gates and his military brass will ensure that Aristide will not show up to threaten Preval's continuing disastrous leadership of Haiti. It was Gates, who was George H. W. Bush's nominee to be CIA director, who helped plan the military coup that ousted Aristide the first time in September 1991. Gates, at the time, was Bush's deputy national security adviser.

Clinton helped Aristide regain his presidency from the CIA-backed coup leader General Raoul Cedras in 1994. But Clinton's disastrous flip-flopping on Haitian refugees from the Cedras dictatorship plunged his new administration into a major crisis. It is certain that when Haiti's earthquake struck, people like Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel were conducting focus group polls to find out how U.S. assistance to Haiti would be received by the public. Although a clear majority of Americans favor helping the beleaguered people of Haiti, and many feel that Obama's assistance has been extremely slow, Emanuel only seems to be concerned about the handful of Americans, including Pat Robertson, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck, who have uttered racist language in reacting to the Haitian tragedy, are worth listening to. But Emanuel does not view things through the enlightened lenses of America's founders but through the religious myopic eyesight of Talmudic interpreters.

Haiti under Aristide and Preval, was forced by Clinton to agree to horribly one-sided "free trade" deals that saw Haiti's workers press ganged into toiling away in Port-au-Prince sweat shops to produce clothing for America's major retailers like Disney. Haiti had no choice -- Clinton imposed devastating economic sanctions against Aristide to force his compliance with the diktats of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Clinton sweetened the pie for his Arkansas rice growing cronies by ensuring that Haiti went from being an exporter of nutritional rice to an importer of expensive bleached and genetically-modified "junk rice" primarily from Arkansas.

When Aristide regained the presidency in 2000, he took immediate steps to improve the lot of the Haitian workers -- he raised the minimum wage to two dollars a day. Bush decided it was time for the CIA and the Southern Command to remove Aristide, which they did with the help of France and Canada. Aristide was exiled to the Central African Republic and then South Africa.

Preval regained office in 2006 after a phony election engineered with the help of the National Endowment for Democracy's International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI), two CIA contrivances acting under the aegis of the U.S. Republican and Democratic Parties, respectively. Soros has adopted Haitian politicians like former Prime Minister Michèle Pierre-Louis who continue to advocate disastrous "free trade" policies and provides them with funding and travel expenses through his Open Society Institute (OSI).

UN "peacekeeping" forces in Haiti have ensured that Aristide and his Lavalas Party does not regain power. One of the methods the UN uses is periodically raiding pro-Aristide slums and killing Lavalas activists in their homes. Bill Clinton was rewarded last year for his guile and deceit committed against Haiti by being named by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon as the UN's Special Envoy for Haiti.

When Honduran President Manuel Zelaya also raised the minimum wage in his country, the CIA and Southern Command arranged for a military coup to remove him. Obama has now decided to place the Southern Command, headquartered in the right-wing Latin American exilee rat's nest of Miami, to coordinate humanitarian relief in Haiti along with the head of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) a CIA pass-through headed by Rajiv Singh, a one-time political hack for Pennsylvania's corrupt Democratic Governor Ed Rendell.

The perfidy that is America's relationship with Haiti extends to Bill Clinton's wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She has appointed her chief of staff Cheryl Mills to oversee America's role in Haiti. Mills has stated: "We actually see our role as ensuring that the leadership of Haiti is able to provide the leadership that the Haitian people properly expect them to provide." That represents an endorsement of the hapless leadership of Preval and a thumbs down to any return for Aristide.

Note: The editor's book, "Jaded Tasks" is named for the covert Pentagon and CIA coperation that removed Aristide in 2004: Operation Jaded Task. Aristide was presented a signed copy of the book in South Africa with a note that states I hope he is rightfully restored to the presidency in Haiti. Haiti needs Aristide more now than it has ever needed him in the past. People like Obama, Gates, Emanuel, the Clintons, Mills, and Southern Command commander General Douglas Fraser need to step out of the way and allow the legitimate president of Haiti to lead his people out of the rubble of their country, "moving from misery to poverty with dignity," as he said from Oliver Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg awaiting permission for a return to his native country.