[R-G] Canada parrots U.S. line on Haiti

[Richard Menec]

> It's also hard to understand why Washington found Aristide so loathsome.
> True, he spoke for, and was supported by, the poor, a characteristic that
> U.S. regimes always find disturbing.

Probably because, despite pressure from the Americans, he refused to
privatize state-owned industries, for one thing.  And he abolished the
military,
which probably didn't please US armaments manufacturers, or the Pentagon.

> By 1994, when a different U.S. administration restored Aristide to power,
he
> had become a willing convert to the revealed truths of our times - free
> trade, globalization, the rights of capital.
>
> Under pressure from Washington, he slashed tariffs, cut food subsidies and
> set up low-wage manufacturing zones.

He also did many other, more positive things.  Support for self-help and
cooperative industry, for example.  Also, the resettlement of the domestic
creole pig
after the US insisted on the slaughter of the entire pig herd of Haiti when
it was
found that some carried African swine disease (see, for example, George
Monbiot:
http://www.monbiot.com/dsp_article.cfm?article_id=107).  The large white
pigs
subsequently imported form the US needed imported food and medicine and
everything else associated with large agribusiness.  And so Haitian farmers,
where
formerly they relied on the domestic creole pig that could forage for food
in the
wild or within larger enclosed areas, suddenly found themselves working for
large
argribusiness firms.  Haiti became an exporter of pork.  To suggest that low
wage
zones were primarily the fault of Aristide is far from accurate.

While in power, Aristide, despite a cruel blockade in the last few years,
managed
also to double the minimum wage.  Another thorn in the side for US and
French
capitalists, and probably another reason why that white CIA plane with green
stripes
was involved in his abduction.