W h i t e w a s h i n g H a i t i I spent such a lot of my time as a excessive category muscle guy for large company, for Wall road and the bankers. in brief, i used to be a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. . . . I helped make Haiti and Cuba a good position for the nationwide urban financial institution boys to gather sales in. I helped within the raping of part a dozen valuable American republics for the good thing about Wall highway. —Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler (1881–1940), chief of the 1915 Marine invasion of Haiti, and the most adorned Marines in U. S. historical past Haiti was once in problem. It used to be March 1, 2004, and the political scenario in Haiti have been swiftly deteriorating. For a month, Democracy Now! had pronounced quite a few tales concerning the turning out to be facts that the us was once secretly assisting armed rebels motive on overthrowing the democratically elected executive of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Then, within the early hours of Sunday, February 29, the kingdom division and the mainstream media introduced that Aristide had “resigned” the presidency and fled Haiti. His whereabouts have been unknown. On Monday morning, simply after Democracy Now! accomplished broadcasting, a mobile name got here in from Rep. Maxine Waters, the California congresswoman who has lengthy championed Haitian rights. Waters had wonderful information: She stated Aristide informed her that he were forcibly taken via U. S. infantrymen to the important African Republic. She said, “He’s surrounded by means of army. It’s like he's in prison. He says he used to be abducted. He acknowledged that he used to be pressured to go away Haiti. ” based on consultant Waters, Aristide stated that diplomats from the yank Embassy in Port-au-Prince had instructed him that man Philippe, a former Haitian police leader and coup plotter, used to be coming to Port-au-Prince and that “[Aristide] might be 114 STATIC killed, many Haitians could be killed, that they wouldn't cease until eventually they did what they desired to do. ” subsequent, an pressing name got here in from Randall Robinson, the founder and previous director of TransAfrica, a bunch that advocates the pursuits of the Caribbean and Africa. Robinson, a relations buddy of the Haitian president, stated that Aristide had referred to as him in addition and “emphatically” denied that he had resigned. “He didn't resign,” Robinson stated. “He was once kidnapped via the USA within the fee of a coup. ” Democracy Now! broke into general programming to place Waters and Robinson at the air. hence started a sequence of occasions that culminated weeks later with Amy accompanying a small delegation to the distant crucial African Republic to document on an remarkable undertaking to defy the world’s maximum energy, problem the company media’s whitewash of what has been taking place in Haiti, and convey the Aristides domestic. The island of Hispaniola—home to Haiti on its western 3rd and the Dominican Republic at the rest—lies 600 miles off the coast of Florida. Haiti’s eight million humans stay in a space the scale of Maryland. the rustic is exclusive through its extremes: With eighty percentage of the inhabitants residing lower than the poverty line (per capita source of revenue is $390 in line with year), Haiti is the poorest kingdom within the Western Hemisphere, and one of many poorest on the earth.