Sunday, March 20, 2011

Sunday Globe Special: The Return of Aristide

I'm happy if the Haitians are happy; however, I'm looking for news about something else in my newspaper.

"Aristide to return to Haiti within days" by Associated Press / March 12, 2011

JOHANNESBURG — Jean-Bertrand Aristide, ousted president of Haiti, will return within days to his homeland, ending seven years in exile, a South African official said yesterday. The former slum priest remains hugely popular, and his return could disrupt an election this month in his earthquake-ravaged country....  

Why? 

Because the agenda-pushing press that opposes Aristide says so?

--more--"  

Related: Can You See the Clouds in Haiti?

I'm trying to read through them, readers. 

"After 7-year exile, Aristide makes his way back to Haiti" by Donna Bryson and Michelle Faul, Associated Press / March 18, 2011

JOHANNESBURG — Declaring the “great day has arrived,’’ Haiti’s Jean-Bertrand Aristide bade farewell at a South African airport yesterday, on his way home after seven years in exile despite President Obama’s effort to keep the hugely popular but controversial figure away....   

Unreal.  

And there is nothing controversial about a guy who gets elected with 67% of the vote.

Aristide, a former priest who worked in Haiti’s slums, was twice elected president and remains extremely popular among the nation’s majority poor.  

Which means he isn't with the AmeriKan government or its slighting and obfuscating mouthpiece media.

He was ousted in his first term in a coup and restored to power in a US military intervention in 1994.

Nothing about the CIA being behind and with the generals who initiated the coup.

After completing his term he was reelected years later, only to flee a rebellion in 2004 aboard a US plane. Aristide contended that he was kidnapped.  

Well, you leave or blam, blam, blam!

That was another CIA-initiated coup, and both oddly happened under Bushes. 

Obama was concerned enough about Aristide’s possibly destabilizing influence to call South African President Jacob Zuma on Tuesday and discuss the matter, said Tommy Vietor, US National Security spokesman. A Zuma spokesman had no comment, saying he was unaware of the call.  

Is that ever a dis or what?

Actor Danny Glover, chair of TransAfrica social justice forum, came to South Africa to accompany Aristide home. Glover asked why former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier could return to Haiti unhindered and not Aristide.

Prominent lawyers and law professors criticized US government “interference’’ in Aristide’s “constitutional and human right’’ to return to Haiti.  

As well as their involvement in the previous coups, right?

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"As election nears, Aristide returns to Haiti; His intentions unknown, vows to serve nation" by  Nick Miroff, Washington Post / March 19, 2011

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide returned home to Haiti yesterday after nearly seven years in exile in South Africa, promising to serve his country “with love’’ but making no direct reference to a crucial presidential election just 48 hours away.

Aristide landed in a private jet, accompanied by his family and an entourage that included actor Danny Glover and other international supporters.

Waving to the crowd, he descended onto the tarmac amid his welcoming committee and a throng of journalists. Minutes later, Aristide delivered a speech — speaking at times in French, Spanish, and English — in which he criticized the exclusion of his Fanmi Lavalas political party from the election.

“Today the Haitian people mark the end of exile and coup d’etat,’’ he said. “We must move peacefully from social exclusion to social inclusion.’’

Pandemonium ensued as soon as Aristide’s caravan tried to leave the airport. Haitian riot police waved back the surging crowd to clear a pathway. Thousands of Haitians, many of them young men, beat drums and marched through the streets, chanting his name and shouting that he had returned. The crowd appeared to be following Aristide toward his villa.  

Protecting him, too!!!

Aristide’s arrival just before tomorrow’s vote could be a factor in a contest already roiled by fraud, violence, and disorder. Though he will not be on the ballot, some here believe he could sway the contest by showing support for one of the candidates — each of whom has opposed him in the past.

The election is seen as an important step toward jump-starting the country’s rebuilding process after the January 2010 earthquake that killed 200,000 people.  

That's why AFTER MONTHS of next to nothing on Haiti there is SO MUCH PRESS recently.

It's why I no longer like elections or politics much; who cares if U.S. turd tool A defeats U.S. puppet poop B, or vice-versa?   

The place has deteriorated even more since a year ago, all the aid loot has been stolen, and an unspoken-of cholera epidemic is out there somewhere.

It was Artistide’s third dramatic return to Haiti in the past two decades, during which “the little priest’’ has been a dominant presence in the country’s affairs — whether from office or exile.  

Yeah, he was pulling all sorts of strings from exile in South Africa, right; how stoo-pid doos they tinks wees iz?

The former shantytown preacher won a landslide victory to become Haiti’s first democratically elected leader in 1991, only to be deposed in a coup seven months later. He was restored in 1994 with help from President Bill Clinton and thousands of US Marines....   

Seeing as the CIA press keeps obfuscating the CIA's role in the events....

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Can I at least get a cough of cholera from the caring AmeriKan media?

"Aristide’s influence on Haiti election unclear" by Associated Press / March 20, 2011

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The choice could not be more distinct — a brash musician versus a matronly former first lady. Yet it’s the name that isn’t on the ballot that could play a decisive role in Haiti’s presidential runoff today.

That name is Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the twice-ousted former president who made a triumphant return from exile two days before the election that will determine who leads Haiti as it struggles to emerge from a political crisis and cholera outbreak while launching a multibillion-dollar earthquake reconstruction effort....

(Blog editor begins violent coughing fit after nearly choking on what his eyes saw; of course, that's all he saw about it in the piece)

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"Amid own ruins, Haitians shudder over horrors in Japan" by Stephen Smith, Globe Staff / March 20, 2011

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The world directed its attention toward this Caribbean island nation last year when a magnitude 7.0 earthquake laid waste to a broad swath of the capital. More than 200,000 died, and more than 1 million moved to fetid tent camps. Now, as hundreds of thousands remain displaced and the wreckage of buildings lies across the city, the world — and the bereft people of Haiti — has shifted its concern to an even stronger earthquake halfway around the globe.  

Yeah, at least the Haitians didn't have any nukes on the coast.

They get the latest on Japan wherever they can. In a nation where so many lost so much in last year’s disaster, updates arrive often through the most ubiquitous source of information, word of mouth. It’s known as Radio 32, as in the 32 teeth of the human mouth....   

Better than what I'm getting in the morning, readers, if you know what I mean.

cholera....  

Oh, it MADE the PAPER again.  Nothing more on it, but they at least mentioned it, right? 

Since last year's earthquake here, life has settled into a grim rhythm for the hundreds of thousands who remain mired in tent camps, with little prospect for real shelter or gainful work, with so much time and so little to occupy it....   

You would think being paid to begin cleaning up the rubble and rebuild would be a good start.   

Where are those damn aid dollars?

 --more--"


Also see: Haiti evacuees strive to adjust in Bay State

Haiti aid projects to include mortgage system

Wall Street at it again, huh?