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1 posted on 02/26/2004 12:05:32 AM PST by kattracks
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To: kattracks
Funny they are all stirred up about Haiti now just as Leftist Aristide is about to be overthrown by his own people. There's a revolution in Haiti and the Left wants to abort it. People like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are normally the type to support a people's wanting to change their government. I guess they haven't asked the people on the island how they actually feel about their "president." Go figure.
2 posted on 02/26/2004 12:08:55 AM PST by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives On In My Heart Forever)
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To: kattracks
...urge that democratic rule be preserved in Haiti.

How does one go about ''preserving'' that which provably has never existed? Aristede, based upon only his own actions, is and always has been Stalin in miniature, Mugabe writ small.

Of course, this type of thug always has had support from an unfortunately large number of the lace-panty types that infest the Department of State.

3 posted on 02/26/2004 12:12:22 AM PST by SAJ
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To: kattracks
Timing is everything
4 posted on 02/26/2004 12:13:32 AM PST by BigSkyFreeper (Liberalism is Communism one drink at a time. - P.J. O'Rourke)
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To: kattracks
On Capitol Hill, 18 black caucus members, plus Rep. Jan Sikorsky, D-Ill., ...

Now, let me guess. This is the OFFICIAL black helicopter crowd, right?

5 posted on 02/26/2004 12:15:41 AM PST by SAJ
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To: kattracks
The BLACK CAUCUS is on record as denouncing our "UNILATERAL ACTION" in Iraq... so what do they want?
9 posted on 02/26/2004 12:18:50 AM PST by GeronL (http://www.ArmorforCongress.com......................Send a Freeper to Congress!)
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To: kattracks
Haitians Aren’t Amused By the Clinton-Aristide Lovefest

11 april 2003

Bill Clinton’s trip to Port-au-Prince on Tuesday was supposed to be all about his Clinton Foundation’s fight against AIDS. Haiti is indeed engaged in a brutal battle against the disease. Yet even so, locals didn’t seem too happy to have the former president calling on Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide. Thoughtful policy types, Haitian and otherwise, who are interested in righting the capsized nation largely ignored the visit.

In fact, what is fascinating about the Clinton voyage is the stark contrast between the glory Mr. Clinton insists on for his Haitian protégé and the disdain that so many Haitians -- once strong supporters of Mr. Aristide -- now have for their president.

This is especially evident among intellectuals and elites, who increasingly write and speak about Mr. Aristide as a man that cultivates a culture of fear and has destroyed a nascent democracy.

At least part of the resentment about the Clinton appearance in the Haitian capital centered on allegations of corruption. There are unflattering but unavoidable suspicions of the relationship between the Haitian president and Clinton Democrats who went into the long distance telephone business with him after his return to power in 1994.

Haiti’s Patriotic Movement for National Salvation (MPSN), which hopes that Mr. Aristide’s failed government will soon fold, issued a press release on April 8 impugning Mr. Clinton’s motives. "Did the former American leader invest in important economic sectors and does he feel the need to safeguard his interests in the post-Aristide era," the MPSN asked.

During his one-day visit Mr. Clinton declared, "I think there should be a humanitarian exception to the embargo on aid," according to the Associated Press. A call for funneling large sums of money into any place so notoriously corrupt should raise eyebrows. But this case creates an even greater miasma. Perhaps not coincidentally, Mr. Aristide’s wife Mildred, who calls the shots in Haiti’s shady telecom business, coordinates the national effort to combat AIDS.

Another point of contention for Haitians was Mr. Clinton’s use of the term "embargo" to describe the freeze on aid. It is rhetoric that Mr. Aristide is also fond of but it is inaccurate ; an embargo is a prohibition against commerce. Moreover, the freeze could be lifted today if Mr. Aristide would comply with some minimal levels of democratic civility. Unfortunately Mr. Clinton did not mention this.

For ardent defenders of Mr. Aristide such as the Congressional Black Caucus or for Caribbean ambassadors to the U.S. who dislike George W. Bush and have been known to actively support Mr. Clinton’s wife, the plea for more international aid for Haiti might have settled some debts. But for those serious about the Haitian struggle, what appears to be relentless Clinton advocacy for the Aristide presidency is disturbing.

The generalized disgust with the Mr. Aristide’s tactics is by no means limited to the sphere of his ideological enemies. Plenty of critics today were once supporters. In the New York Review of Books, Peter Dailey, who describes himself as a journalist who was sympathetic to Mr. Aristide in the early 1990s, has written a two-part review of "Haiti’s Predatory Republic : The Unending Transition to Democracy" by Robert Fatton, Jr.

Among other things, the Fatton book traces the historical roots of Haiti’s "predatory democracy," a place where, Mr. Dailey writes, "government remains the primary route to power and wealth." Thus it is not surprising that Mr. Aristide has become another in a long line of authoritarian Haitian leaders.

In Part I of his review, on March 13 Mr. Dailey explains what Bill Clinton seems to still not understand. "Aristide’s opponents turned out to be neither the entrenched economic elite nor the die-hard elements of the old Duvalieriste party, as almost everyone in 1994 might have anticipated, but the social democratic-constitutionalist wing of the Lavalas movement, the left-wing-populist coalition that first brought Aristide to power, which was mobilized into opposition by the Aristide government’s increasingly corrupt and authoritarian character."

As Mr. Aristide’ party broke apart in the mid-1990s a deep rift grew between himself and the idealists who helped him to power. Writes Mr. Dailey : "Aristide was now opposed by veterans of the anti-Duvalier struggle and almost all of the left, persons who had stood with him in the Eighties and fought for his return from exile. Among the disaffected former supporters are virtually all of Haiti’s leading intellectuals and artists, the persons who had best articulated the humane values that should be at the basis of any new Haitian society."

"By 1999, it seemed to many Haitians that Aristide, who once personified Haitian aspirations for democracy, now represented Haitian democracy’s biggest obstacle," Mr. Dailey says.

Nor are Aristide critics limited to Haiti. In Washington, as well, some members of congress are admitting the failure of Haitian democracy. On Feb. 5, during a Senate hearing on Haitian migrants, Senator Edward Kennedy had this to say about the situation : "When Haiti elected its first democratic president in 1990, we had a great hope for economic and political stability and respect for basic rights. But even Aristide has failed to bring in a new era of peace and prosperity.

"Instead, we have seen escalating political violence. Illegal arrests, arbitrary detentions, disappearances, killings, crackdowns on political opponents, and restraints on free speech and free assembly are all too common. In the last six months, we have seen new waves of violence, targeting journalists, students, human-rights actvists, and the government’s political opponents. Those who commit these harsh acts of brutality and intolerance often operate with impunity, and in some cases, they appear to be acting with government support."

By now even a zombie would recognize how thoroughly discredited Mr. Aristide is and how critical international pressure is to altering the situation. Which raises the question of why Mr. Clinton doggedly pursues his cozy relationship with the Haitian president.

MARY ANASTASIA O’GRADY

12 posted on 02/26/2004 12:40:13 AM PST by kcvl
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To: kattracks; All
Cross-link, for reference in depth:

-Haiti, descending into chaos again--

13 posted on 02/26/2004 12:47:01 AM PST by backhoe (Has that Clinton "legacy" made you feel safer yet?)
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To: kattracks
...and they asked the administration to send in troops to protect Haitian officials

Bwah....

17 posted on 02/26/2004 1:04:19 AM PST by csvset
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To: kattracks
"We cannot have (Aristide's) life taken away on our watch," Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., said beforehand.

Why not?

My advice to the rebels would be to kill the communist ex-priest IMMEDIATLY - or he will be re-installed....
Kill him NOW....and all that stand with him....

There is nothing to fear from the U.N. -- it will be months or perhaps years before they work up the consensus or nerve to do anything...

My question to the black caucus is to ask where their first loyalty lies --- with America's best interests, or some communist black thug in Haiti...
The Congressional Black Caucus speaks up publicly to save this sorry bastard, but I haven't heard a word of condemnation about the black leaders in Africa murdering, stealing from and dispossessing white farmers....

WHY?

Semper Fi

19 posted on 02/26/2004 1:14:55 AM PST by river rat (Militant Islam is a cult, flirting with extinction)
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To: kattracks
On Monday night, when Powell returned his call, Jackson urged Powell to engage in shuttle diplomacy between Aristide and opposition leaders, and asked that Bush send U.S. soldiers to protect the president's compound.

Not necessary. There'll be some Haitian solders there within a week or so, maybe in time for an Easter celebration.


21 posted on 02/26/2004 1:36:38 AM PST by archy (Concrete shoes, cyanide, TNT! Done dirt cheap! Neckties, contracts, high voltage...Done dirt cheap!)
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To: kattracks; All
Haiti has been the main transhipment point for South American cocaine since the early 1990s.

Follow the money.

23 posted on 02/26/2004 4:14:24 AM PST by angkor
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To: kattracks
Yup the left couldn't drop the bombs fast enough in Kosovo and now they want this marxist thug propped op in Haiti. And there is drug money and other money behind both campaigns. The left is despicable.
33 posted on 02/27/2004 12:09:15 PM PST by 2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten
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To: kattracks
Mr. Kennedy and his mother are both on the board of advisors of the Aristide Foundation for Democracy, a tax-exempt foundation that raises money for Mr. Aritstide’s use in Haiti.

Other foundation board members are Reps. John Conyers (D., Mich.) and Charles Rangel (D., N.Y.).




Haitian Connections
HOW CLINTON’S CRONIES CASHED IN ON FOREIGN POLICY.

29 mai 2001


Ms. O’Grady edits The Americas column



One of the famous foreign policy interventions of the Clinton Presidency was the controversial decision to return Jean Bertrand Aristide to power in Haiti in 1994. This newspaper supported Mr. Clinton, arguing that with U.S. prestige committed and with the restoration of democratic government in the impoverished island as a goal, the President deserved support.

So it is worth revisiting the status of Haiti today, especially to ask how it came to pass that in the wake of this intervention, President Clinton’s political associates--including a former Democratic Party finance chair, a former White House counselor and Joseph P. Kennedy II--ended up in commercial relationships with the Aristide government’s monopoly-owned telephone company.

Since 1994, both as president and later as the power broker behind the presidency of René Preval and the Lavalas Party, Mr. Aristide has ruled Haiti like a mob don. He has extorted the business community, trampled on the 1987 constitution and terrorized his political and economic opponents. Just this past week the Coast Guard sent a ship of 121 Haitian refugees back to the island. Nearly 700 have tried to escape by sea this year.

Haiti’s November 26 Presidential election, in which less than 5% of Haitians voted, was a sham. Five international human rights organizations released a joint statement in January denouncing the election’s violent political climate. Amnesty International called upon the Lavalas Party to condemn acts of intimidation and violence committed in the party’s name. The European Union voted to withhold aid.

In response, the Clinton Administration in January sent Anthony Lake, a former Clinton national security adviser, to Port-au-Prince. He came back with an eight-point agreement in which Mr. Aristide promised better behavior in the future.

The Lake agreement was one free pass too many for Mr. Aristide’s battered opponents (just this past Monday, a house was shot up where opposition leaders were meeting, wounding three). They have grown increasingly eager to tell what they know about Mr. Aristide’s business activities--both now and in Washington during the 1991-94 exile that followed his overthrow by General Raul Cedras.

Regarded as Haiti’s legitimate president at that time, U.S. authorities granted Mr. Aristide access to the country’s frozen assets, most notably the long distance telephone royalties due to Haitian Teleco. According to Christopher Caldwell, writing in the July 1994 American Spectator, Mr. Aristide "raised hackles at the Latin America division of AT&T by ordering the proceeds from Haiti’s international phone traffic moved to a numbered Panamanian account."

In November 1993, The Wall Street Journal reported that Mr. Aristide was paying Democratic Party operative Michael Barnes $55,000 a month to lobby for U.S. action to reinstate him. With the help of U.S. troops, he returned to Haiti. After regaining Haiti’s presidency, the telephone monopoly continued to be useful. Because Haiti is one of the top three markets in the region for long distance calls from the U.S., the monopoly is a cash cow. Mr. Aristide placed loyal Lavalas followers in charge of it, keeping it under his control.

According to the Federal Communications Commission, the most recent officially negotiated settlement rate--the cost Teleco charges U.S. carriers for handling a long distance call in Haiti--is 46 cents a minute. But digital switching allows the company to charge what it wishes and to terminate calls in favor of any long distance carrier that it chooses. Moreover, if long distance carriers use Internet protocols to "bypass" official lines, the FCC cannot count the traffic. Two different long distance suppliers shopping the Haitian market have reported to us that Teleco officials offered them access to the local network at rates well below the official settlement rate in exchange for payment made to specially designated accounts.

Based on telecom settlement processes, a company with privileged access to the network would also receive a high proportion of return traffic from Haiti, also a big money maker. Says one U.S. telecom expert with knowledge of Haiti’s system : "The real sweetheart deals are the ones that have a connection inside Teleco. Those are the deals that make people filthy rich." A U.S. official specializing in international telecom says, "This is exactly what we’ve been seeing in Haiti for years. The money doesn’t go anywhere that leads to a network build-out. Calls get through and someone gets very rich." Despite high rates justified for the purposes of expanding service, the number of phone lines serving the country remains paltry ; most Haitians are relegated to the use of "call centers" to make phone calls. Those centers are now in the hands of Lavalas.

The wide recognition in Haiti that such deals are available has made the presence of independent U.S. long distance provider Fusion Telecommunications International a topic of much discussion among the Haitian business community. Fusion’s board of directors reads like a who’s who of Democratic Party heavyweights.

Fusion’s CEO is Marvin Rosen, who was the finance chairman of the Democratic National Committee during the 1996 Clinton fund-raising scandals. Fusion’s board of directors includes Joseph P. Kennedy II, former Mississippi Governor Raymond Mabus and Bill Clinton’s White House chief of staff and Arkansas confidant Thomas "Mack" McLarty, now with Kissinger McLarty Associates. Mr. McLarty traveled the region as the White House’s Special Envoy to the Americas. The Fusion board also includes Joseph R. Wright, a former director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Reagan. Listed as chairman of the Fusion Advisory Board is former President Bush’s White House Chief of Staff John Sununu. Click here to view a complete listing.





Last fall, when we began to inquire about Fusion’s long distance service to Haiti, the company’s in-house counsel refused to either confirm or deny that it even offered service in that market. Numerous follow-up calls since to her and other members of management were never returned. Mr. McLarty denied any knowledge altogether about Fusion’s involvement in Haiti. Mr. Kennedy did not return our query.

It was only after our Mary O’Grady independently confirmed Fusion’s activity in Haiti and wrote about it for the Americas column that Mr. Kennedy’s office gave us a statement : "Joe has no joint venture, partnership or business arrangement with the president of Haiti or for that matter, anyone in Haiti." The statement also says that Mr. Kennedy is not involved in running Fusion. Mr. Kennedy’s denial is interesting given his February 7 op-ed in the Boston Globe where he wrote on the occasion of Mr. Aristide’s inauguration : "I was proud to help bring more than $1 million in private investment from Fusion into Haiti."

We are not suggesting that Fusion’s business in Haiti is illegal. And we are not so naive as to be shocked at the spectacle of prominent political figures exploiting their former lives as public officials. We are saying that Fusion’s Haiti deal is sleazy. For people connected with the Clinton Presidency-cum-political machine to attach themselves like pilot fish to the bleeding ruin of Haiti under Jean Bertrand Aristide, in the wake of an enormous commitment of American prestige and money on behalf of Haiti’s people, doesn’t survive any conceivable smell test.

It also smells that it is so hard for Fusion’s Clintonites to acknowledge secret business deals with Mr. Aristide, the sole owner and operator of the Haitian economy, who is in power thanks to a U.S. intervention. And yes, we do wonder if this is the tip of yet another Clinton iceberg. The Bush Administration, particularly Colin Powell at State, should be alert to this phenomenon as it revisits the venues of the Clinton foreign policy legacy.





THE AMERICAS

Con Fusion ? Clinton’s Haiti policy deserves prompt scrutiny.

BY MARY ANASTASIA O’GRADY Tuesday, May 29, 2001 12:01 a.m. EDT

(Editor’s note : This column originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 26. ).

Marvin Rosen (finance chairman for the Democratic National Committee from September 1995 until January 1997), former Democratic Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II and Bill Clinton confidante Thomas (Mack) McClarty III are all on the board of Fusion Telecommunications International, according to that company’s Web site. Mr. Rosen, who was active in the DNC at the height of the Clinton fund-raising scandals, is also the company’s chief executive officer.

Fusion may not be well known in the U.S., but it is a well-known name in the Haitian business community. Although Haiti has never privatized Teleco, the state-owned monopoly, or officially deregulated the country’s telecommunications sector, the government, which has been run by former president Jean Bertrand Aristide’s Lavalas Party since 1994, has granted Fusion a concession in the long-distance market. The terms of the deal are a secret, but sources say Fusion has an office inside Teleco.

Of course there’s nothing illegal about a few heavyweights from the Democratic Party cutting a deal with a foreign government. Nor is it illegal to keep the deal hush-hush. But considering the Clinton administration’s remarkable passivity toward Mr. Aristide’s political terror and corruption over the past seven years, Fusion’s concession is, at the very least, interesting.





It’s not surprising that many Haiti watchers are asking how deep the connections between the Aristide and Clinton political machines really go. There are also hopes among Haiti’s battered democratic opposition that President Bush will have a look at these connections and perhaps reverse a longstanding U.S. policy of not responding effectively to Mr. Aristide’s misdeeds.

Moreover, it should be remembered that American fighting men were employed on Mr. Aristide’s behalf. He was reinstalled as president in 1994 after a U.S. invasion overthrew military coup leader Raoul Cedras. Ever since his return, first as president and then as the power behind the throne during the current presidency of Rene Preval, the Clinton protégé has piled up a dubious record. Economic deterioration, drug trafficking and political assassinations of Lavalas critics have defined Mr. Aristide’s Haiti. Every national election since 1997, including the one last Nov. 7 in which Mr. Aristide claimed victory, has been ruled fraudulent by independent outside observers. Political violence in Port-au-Prince forced the 1999 closing of offices of the International Republican Institute, a U.S. party-affiliated agency that promotes democracy around the world.

The Clinton nonchalance about such matters has puzzled Democrats and Republicans alike. One close observer of U.S.-Haitian affairs said before last fall’s sham elections in Haiti : "I am a Democrat but I have had a hard time understanding it. The administration can have an influence and they’re not doing it. The lengths to which they’re going to are rather remarkable. It is a policy of denying reality."

Unsurprisingly, one theory is that it has to do with Mr. Aristide’s important friendships. There are rumors inside the Haitian telecom industry that Fusion’s concession includes a cost for long-distance minutes substantially below what competitors are offered. If that is false, Fusion could clear it up. But Fusion’s in-house counsel refuses to answer any questions about Haiti, offer the name of anyone at the company who might do so, or return follow-up phone calls. Nor would Mr. McClarty discuss Fusion’s Haiti deal. "Mack doesn’t know anything about Fusion and Haiti," a McClarty spokesman told me. That doesn’t seem to jibe with his listing as a board member.

People with knowledge of the matter say that Fusion in Haiti is a joint venture between Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Aristide. Again, that cannot be confirmed, and Mr. Kennedy was not immediately available for comment. [In a letter published in The Wall Street Journal on March 6, Fusion’s Carol Bain wrote that "Mr. Kennedy does not have any joint venture with Haiti’s President Aristide."] But the Haitian despot, whose Lavalas Party was recently denounced by Amnesty International for threatening in early January to exterminate its opposition, was a guest at Mr. Kennedy’s second wedding, according to press reports. Mr. Kennedy and his mother are both on the board of advisors of the Aristide Foundation for Democracy, a tax-exempt foundation that raises money for Mr. Aritstide’s use in Haiti.

Other foundation board members are Reps. John Conyers (D., Mich.) and Charles Rangel (D., N.Y.). In the June 26, 2000, issue of Insight magazine Catherine Edwards reported that Mr. Conyers had received a letter from a Haitian senator asking him to resign from the foundation. According to Insight, it read : "The incumbent de facto government controls and diverts all the financial resources and power of the Haitian state for the use of the Lavalas political party. The Aristide Foundation is the principal mechanism for diversion of public resources."





Whatever the Fusion deal is, members of the Haitian business community insist that it had to be negotiated through the ruling party and its leader, Mr. Aristide. As one leading Haitian businessman told me, "The telephone concessions are an arbitrary distribution of favors. Anybody who got anything received it through Lavalas. They control the telephone sector. There has been no privatization, no transparency and no legal rules."

During Mr. Aristide’s time as a president-elect in exile, he had access to some $40 to $50 million in frozen Haitian government assets. He drew on those assets at a rate of $900,000 a month during his first year of exile, and $1.8 million a month starting in October 1992, as previously reported in The Wall Street Journal. He also collected millions of dollars in telephone and other royalties due the government of Haiti. This explains how he was able to pay expensive lawyers, with good political connections, to press his case for U.S. aid in returning him to the Haitian presidency. A book written by Lynn Garrison and published in 2000 by Leprechaun Publishing Group claims that Mr. Aristide holds an unpublished manuscript titled "I Paid For My Return."

The Haitian democratic opposition refuses to recognize Mr. Aristide’s November "victory" in the presidential elections and it’s heading for a showdown. This weekend it will convene in several provinces in order to construct an alternative government. During George W.’s "real good scrubbing" of the White House, a close look at conditions in Haiti and what role the previous administration played in upholding a highly unattractive regime would bear a close look.

Ms. O’Grady edits The Americas column, which appears in The Wall Street Journal on Fridays.





Review & outlook : Haitian connections

The Wall Street Journal - US Abstracts ; May 29, 2001

The Clinton presidency made one of its most controversial foreign policy decisions when it intervened to return Jean Bertrand Aristide to power in Haiti in 1994. Since his return, Aristide has run the country like a mob don, terrorizing political and economic opponents, trampling on the country’s constitution and extorting from the business community. One of Mr. Aristide’s biggest source of revenue comes from his control of the country’s telephone monopoly. A key player in the provision of telephone services between the US and Haiti is Fusion Telecommunications, whose board of includes Larry McLarty, a former White House chief of staff. While it is not unusual for former public servants to exploit the experience in private life, the link between Clintonites in Fusion Telecommunications and the Aristide regime does not smell good. The Bush administration should therefore scrutinize with care other areas of Clinton’s foreign policy interventions.

Abstracted from : The Wall St Journal

36 posted on 02/27/2004 12:41:34 PM PST by kcvl
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