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"To have found himself in such high clover -- Friend of Bill Clinton, Keeper of the Secrets, Defender of the Middle Path -- is surely to feel a little giddy, a little wonderful. In 22 years of diplomatic reporting for Time magazine he had allowed himself only one Walter Mitty fantasy, and that was to be ambassador to Moscow. Now he is the number two man at State. Now there is not only Russia to deal with, but Bosnia and Haiti. Already he has learned to strike the note of cautious optimism ("We have faced up to Bosnia in a...

Documents obtained by CBS News show that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) discussed using their covert operation "Fast and Furious" to argue for controversial new rules about gun sales. PICTURES: ATF "Gunwalking" scandal timeline In Fast and Furious, ATF secretly encouraged gun dealers to sell to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels to go after the "big fish." But ATF whistleblowers told CBS News and Congress it was a dangerous practice called "gunwalking," and it put thousands of weapons on the street. Many were used in violent crimes in Mexico. Two were found at the murder...

Actor Danny Glover has taken on a new role - as international statesman. The "Lethal Weapon" star traveled to South Africa late Wednesday to escort exiled former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide back home. Aristide has been issued a diplomatic passport after seven years in exile but has encountered resistance to his return to Haiti before a presidential run-off election on Sunday. Glover questioned why former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier would be allowed to return, but the twice-elected Aristide would not. "People of good conscience cannot be idle while a former dictator is able to return unhindered while a democratic leader...

In 1915, the US Marines invaded Haiti, occupying the country until 1934. US officials rewrote the Haitian constitution, and when the Haitian national assembly refused to ratify it, they dissolved the assembly. They then held a "referendum" in which about 5% of the electorate voted and approved the new constitution – which conveniently changed Haitian law to allow foreigners to own land – with 99.9% voting for approval. The situation today is remarkably similar. The country is occupied, and although the occupying troops wear blue helmets, everyone knows that Washington calls the shots. On 28 November an election was held...

Haiti’s humanitarian disaster has rightfully elicited an outpouring of support from around the world. But the tragedy should also elicit outrage because the massive destruction, suffering and loss of life were largely avoidable. Natural disasters, such as hurricanes and floods that have regularly afflicted Haiti, have plagued mankind throughout history. As the world has become wealthier, the ability to cope with such calamities has grown; annual deaths due to such disasters have declined by 96 percent since the 1920s. Economic growth has made it possible for countries around the world, increasingly including developing nations, to mitigate damage done by “acts...

Haiti: Victim of Clinton's Old Black MagicBy Lowell PonteFrontPageMagazine.com | February 20, 2004 ONCE AGAIN HAITIAN PRESIDENT JOHN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE may be ousted by his citizens, who began a new rebellion against his tyrannical rule on February 5. After Aristide was removed by a military coup in 1991, President Bill Clinton in 1994 sent 20,000 U.S. troops to Haiti to restore to power this former Roman Catholic Priest and advocate for Leftist Liberation Theology who once called Cuban Marxist dictator Fidel Castro his “greatest personal hero.”  “There is frankly no enthusiasm” for sending armed U.S. troops to secure Aristide’s presidency again,...

While OBAMA is trying to stay under the MSM spotlights with the CLINTOONS as the crisis is going on in HAITI the other issues are kept under the radars. But yet the last earthquake is revealing the severe weaknesses of the Haitian society which is obviously a consequence of former repeated big political mistakes allowed by developped countries which could have helped getting over several crisis and undermining violence and corruption. Those who paid attention to HAITI's problems in the last decades generally know that ARISTIDE ,a former catholic priest,was a violent marxist activist pretending to defend poor people...When he...

<p>Here is video of exiled former Haitian President Jean Bertrand-Aristide today saying he is prepared to return to Haiti and assist the people of the country in dealing with the devastation left by the 7.0 Earthquake that took place there earlier this week. Aristide is currently living in exile in South Africa.</p>

Controversial former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide says he would like to return home to assist in rebuilding Haiti in the wake of this week's earthquake. The former Haitian leader lives in forced exile in South Africa. Mr. Aristide says he and his family are ready to leave for Haiti at a moment's notice. "As far as we are concerned, we are ready to leave today, tomorrow, at any time, to join the people of Haiti, to share in their suffering, help rebuild the country," he said. "Moving from misery to poverty with dignity." Aristide has been in exile in South...

Exiled Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide has announced that he is ready to return home to help rebuild his earthquake-shattered country. The former president has been living in South African since fleeing Haiti during a violent uprising in 2004. Aristide told reporters gathered at a hotel near Johannesburg's international airport that he is ready to return from exile as soon as today.

In the wake of the devastating earthquake, American eyes are again turned toward Haiti—something that only seems to happen when yet another disaster strikes, and never during the daily chaos and misery that plague the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. I’ve spent a good deal of time in Haiti, reporting first on the repression under the Duvaliers, then on the rise of Jean-Bertrand Aristide's popular movement, and then on the 1991 military coup that brought him down. I was there during the period of the 1994 military intervention that restored Aristede to power. US interest in the country seemed...

In October 1994, President Bill Clinton used the U.S. military to force Haiti to take back former President Jean Bertrand Aristide, an intolerant populist who had been deposed in a coup three years earlier. The Haitian people didn’t fare well under the decade of Aristide tyranny and corruption following that U.S. intervention. But key Democrats, who secured contracts with the Haitian government, did. This sad chapter in U.S. foreign policy is a reminder of the immortal words of the French statesman Charles Talleyrand: “Countries don’t have friends, they have interests.” The Clinton administration had interests in Haiti. And that fact...

GONAIVES, Haiti (AP) - Calling for an uprising against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, thousands of protesters, some armed, hurled stones at outnumbered Haitian police and blocked streets with flaming tires. "We're going to feed Aristide to the fire!" people once loyal to the former slum priest yelled Monday night, standing near a smoldering barricade in the western port of Gonaives, Haiti's fourth-largest city. Demonstrators spoke bitterly against the president, accusing him of orchestrating an attack in December that ultimately left 10 people dead, saying he staged the apparent coup himself as an excuse to silence the opposition. "He betrayed us," said...

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti March 5 — U.S. forces have expanded their presence in Haiti beyond the capital, deploying to at least two cities that are rebel strongholds, a U.S. military spokesman said Friday. Excerpted--click for full article. ================================================================ Why are we Haitied so much? The Haiti invasion and the French-looking Candidate On Sunday morning, the scene was pure anarchy. To have called it a very chaotic situation would be putting it mildly. The whole thing looked very troubling. Confusion reigned as the free-for-all pandemonium -- the disarray and tumult -- grew wilder and wilder. As the cameras panned, zooming in on...

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), is a private, nonprofit organization, was founded in the early 1980's under the influence of Ronald Reagan for "supporting democracy abroad". So we've had that going on for years. The NED basically does overtly what the CIA used to do covertly. It funds civil society groups and organizations that fit within U.S. strategic interests in various countries.

Young love: Fred with first wife Sarah On a winter's day in 1958, Fred Thompson's classmates crammed into a stadium to watch the hulking 16-year-old football star in a match. But their cheers turned to groans and girls had tears in their eyes as the handsome 6ft 5in youth slumped to the ground. When a group of coaches rushed to assess his injury, he flashed them a conspiratorial grin. 'How's the crowd taking it?' he whispered. Nearly a half century later, it is no surprise to anyone in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, that the schoolboy who always wanted to be centre...

These sections are particularly interesting: Over about two decades of lobbying (during which he also acted and practiced law), Thompson made nearly $1.3 million and represented clients including a British reinsurance company facing billions of dollars in asbestos claims, Canadian-owned cable companies, and deposed Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, according to government documents and media accounts from his first run for the Senate in 1994 Thompson did file papers with the Justice Department to represent Haitian President Aristide in October 1991, two weeks after Aristide was overthrown. The filing lists Thompson as a member of the Washington-based law firm Arent Fox...

Thousands demand Aristide return   Mr Aristide fled an armed revolt in 2004 Thousands of people have demonstrated in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, demanding the return of exiled former President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.Supporters chanted "Aristide or death!" and "Aristide's blood is our blood!" as they marched to the National Palace on the ex-leader's 53rd birthday. Mr Aristide fled an armed revolt two years ago and is in South Africa. President Rene Preval had said during this year's election campaign he would consider allowing him to return home. However, the US has warned this could destabilise the country. Political prisonersSaturday's march was...

Drug probe targets Aristide Haiti's ex-president is main focus of investigation of bribes from dug traffickers, but paper trail is lacking. BY JAY WEAVER AND JACQUELINE CHARLES • This is the first of two parts. Jean-Bertrand Aristide was a modern-day Moses to Haiti's poor masses, a former Catholic priest who rose to the presidency by promising to wash away the country's bloody and corrupt past. But since his ouster as president in 2004, U.S. authorities have been investigating detailed accounts alleging that Aristide and several top aides sought and took millions of dollars in bribes from drug traffickers in Haiti,...

Excerpt - PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - U.N. peacekeepers and gang members traded gunfire Tuesday in the volatile Cite Soleil slum of the Haitian capital, leaving at least four people dead, witnesses and a U.N. official said. The deaths were the latest casualties from sporadic clashes between gangs and U.N. troops, who were called to the country following the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The bodies of two young men were displayed by gang members in the slum. U.N. military spokesman Col. El Ouafi Boulbars said the bodies of two other suspected gang members were turned over to police. Gang members...