EMPIRE OF CHAOS

COUNTRIES

PAGE 4

 

HAITI

"President of Haiti Jean-Bertrand Aristide did not resign. He was abducted by the United States in the commission of a coup."

Randall Robinson, the founder and former director of TransAfrica, 2004

"The coup against Aristide, then, must be understood not in isolation, but as the culmination of activities that really began the minute he was re-elected in 2000. Destabilization efforts by the U.S. government, active U.S. support for the creation of a so-called civil-society opposition, and eventually the invasion of Haiti by an armed band of criminals and murderers were all part of a process designed to ensure that Haiti would return fully to the fold of the U.S. empire and its minions in Haiti."

Bill Fletcher, Jr, 2004

 

"Jean-Bertrand Aristide's second term as President of Haiti would end the same way as had his first had, cut short in a U.S.-backed coup d'état. Aristide's opposition to neoliberalism, his defiant stance towards the U.S. and France, and his enduring popularity with Haiti's poor had made him a marked man from the very beginning of his term in February 2001."

Nik Barry-Shaw, 2008

 

"On June 28, 2009, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was awakened by gunfire. A coup was carried out by US-trained military officers, including graduates of the infamous US Army School of the Americas (WHINSEC) in Georgia. President Zelaya was illegally taken to Costa Rica.
Democracy in Honduras ended as a de facto government of the rich and powerful seized control. A sham election backed by the US confirmed the leadership of the coup powers. The US and powerful lobbyists continue to roam the hemisphere trying to convince other Latin American countries to normalize relations with the coup government."

Bill Quigley and Laura Raymond, 2010

 

"History is repeating itself in Haiti, as democracy is being destroyed for the second time in the past fifteen years. Amazingly, the main difference seems to be that this time it is being done openly and in broad daylight, with the support of the "international community" and the United Nations
... The US Agency for International Development and the International Republican Institute (the international arm of the Republican Party) had spent tens of millions of dollars to create and organize an opposition ... and to make Haiti under Aristide ungovernable.
... Taking advantage of Haiti's desperate poverty and dependence on foreign aid, it stopped international aid to the government, from the summer of 2000 until the 2004 coup."

Mark Weisbrot, 2005

 

"During the Cold War, the U.S. supported the dictatorships of Papa Doc Duvalier and then Baby Doc Duvalier - which ruled the country from 1957 to 1986 - as an anti-communist counter-weight to Castro's Cuba nearby.
Under guidance from Washington, Baby Doc Duvalier opened the Haitian economy up to U.S. capital in the 1970s and 1980s. Floods of U.S. agricultural imports destroyed peasant agriculture. As a result, hundred of thousands of people flocked to the teeming slums of Port-au-Prince to labor for pitifully low wages in sweatshops located in U.S. export processing zones.
In the 1980s, masses of Haitians rose up to drive the Duvaliers from power - later, they elected reformer Jean-Bertrand Aristide to be president on a platform of land reform, aid to peasants, reforestation, investment in infrastructure for the people, and increased wages and union rights for sweatshop workers.
The U.S. in turn backed a coup that drove [Jean-Bertrand] Aristide from power in 1991. Eventually, the elected president was restored to power in 1994 when Bill Clinton sent U.S. troops to the island - but on the condition that he implement the U.S. neoliberal plan - which Haitians called the "plan of death."
Aristide resisted parts of the U.S. program for Haiti, but implemented other provisions, undermining his hoped-for reforms. Eventually, though, the U.S. grew impatient with Aristide's failure to obey completely, especially when he demanded $21 billion in reparations during his final year in office. The U.S. imposed an economic embargo that strangled the country, driving peasants and workers even deeper into poverty.
In 2004, Washington collaborated with Haiti's ruling elite to back death squads that toppled the government, kidnapped and deported Aristide. The United Nations sent troops to occupy the country, and the puppet government was installed to continue Washingotn's neoliberal plans."

Ashley Smith

 

"Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was overthrown in a violent US-backed coup under the George H.W. Bush administration... What Clinton did is he kept Aristide in exile for years, until they could squeeze out of Aristide a commitment to uphold US neoliberal economic programs in Haiti and that Aristide would agree not to lay claim to the years he spent in exile as part of his presidency.
He was a democratically elected president. The US violently overthrew him. They butchered Haiti. And then Clinton refused to put Aristide back in power, even though he could have done it with one phone call. And instead, what he did is he implemented a vicious regime of economic neoliberalism inside of Haiti. The Haitian people now are suffering under that neoliberal economic model and the aftermath of this repression force that just terrorized the people of Haiti. To have Bill Clinton now be the person who's going to "stabilize" Haiti and dabble in the economics of this incredibly poor suffering nation, to me, is just a grotesque act on the part of the United Nations. And I think that anyone who's about justice for Haiti should rise up and say that Bill Clinton has no business stepping foot in Haiti in any official capacity with the United Nations at all."

Jeremy Scahill, 2009

 

"Condelleza Rice and Colin Powell are both dangerous people. What they did in Haiti [2004 U.S.-backed coup that ousted democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide] is a good measure of it. They destroyed a democracy. They squelched loans that had been approved by the Inter-American Development Bank. They did everything behind the scenes, including arming the thugs that came to overrun the country. They're frauds."

Randall Robinson

 

"In 1825, a scant two decades after Haitian independence was declared, France demanded an indemnity of 150 million francs (roughly estimated at $20 billion in today's dollars) for the property lost by French plantation owners during the quite bloody, quite fiery revolution-one that Haiti had won.
Haiti was to compensate France not only for lost plantation lands and crops, but also for the loss of the Haitians themselves since Haitian slaves had been France's most valuable Caribbean asset. France backed up this demand with the threat of a full-blown blockade, and Haiti agreed to pay in exchange for France's recognition. As a result, France duly recognized Haiti as an independent country. The huge debt payments were delivered assiduously by the Haitian government with money borrowed-conveniently-from French banks. Haiti also paid the interest on those loans in a timely fashion.
... France, in collusion with the United States, continued to bleed Haiti until related debts were finally paid off-in 1947!
This is how Haiti began to be a failed state."

Amy Wilentz, 2015

 

"The intractable poverty and social discord in Haiti is a legacy of US governments backing decades of dictatorships under Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier. Repeated US military invasions over the past century to repress socially progressive politics ensured that Haiti retained its function as an impoverished offshore location for American corporations to ruthlessly exploit for sweatshop labor."

Finian Cunningham, 2017

 

"Haiti was the centerpiece of the Caribbean Basin Initiative, launched by David Rockefeller's International Basic Economy Corporation, which aimed to create a low-wage manufacturing platform in the Caribbean for US multinationals. Real wages in Haiti declined 56% from 1983-1991 after the Caribbean Basin Initiative kicked in. The US textile industry has a huge presence in Haiti. Nowhere in the world is labor cheaper."

Dean Henderson in his book "Big Oil & Their Bankers In The Persian Gulf"

 

"The Clinton administration was credited for working for the return to power of Jean Bertrand Aristide after he was overthrown in a military coup. But, in fact, Clinton had stalled the return for as long as he could, and had instead tried his best to return anti-Aristide conservatives to a leading power role in a mixed government, because Aristide was too leftist for Washington's tastes.
... Clinton was not actually repulsed by coup leader Raoul Cédras and company, for they posed no ideological barrier to the United States continuing the economic and strategic control of Haiti it's maintained for most of the century.
... Faced ultimately with Aristide returning to power, Clinton demanded and received - and then made sure to publicly announce - the Haitian president's guarantee that he would not try to remain in office to make up for the time lost in exile. Clinton of course called this 'democracy,' although it represented a partial legitimization of the coup... Jean-Bertrand Aristide's reception was a joyous celebration filled with optimism. However, unbeknownst to his adoring followers, while they were regaining Aristide, they may have lost Aristidism."

William Blum

 

"The violent U.S., Canadian, and French-inspired coup d'état [against Jean-Bertrand Aristide elected-President of Haiti] in February 2004 left thousands killed, displaced, imprisoned and exiled, and the imposition of a disastrous regime of human rights abuses that lasted two years under direct United Nations sanction. The 2004 coup was yet another crushing blow to Haiti's remarkable democratic movement of the poor majority - and has set the country back decades, economically, socially and politically."

Niraj Joshi, 2009

 

"In 1990, Haiti had its first free election, and to the surprise and shock of Washington, the organized public in the slums and hills elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a popular priest committed to liberation theology. The United States at once moved to undermine the elected government and, after the military coup that overthrew it a few months later, lent substantial support to the vicious military junta and its elite supporters who took power.
In 2004, the two traditional torturers of Haiti, France and the United States, joined by Canada, kidnapped President Aristide - who had been elected again - and shipped him off to central Africa. Aristide and his party were then effectively barred from the 2010-11 elections."

Noam Chomsky

 

"In 1909, US financiers began to lay the groundwork for an American occupation of Haiti... The occupation was a mechanism to control Haiti while American businesses sucked value out of the country and made sure nationals of other countries could not.
... During the nineteen-year occupation, periodic rebellions and uprisings were brutally put down by the marines. Finally, in 1929, another massacre of Haitians provoked a review of the occupation by Congress, as well as an eventual pullout in 1934.
... Nineteen years of occupation left enduring scars on Haitian society. The racism and segregation enforced by the marines led directly to the reactionary black-power rhetoric employed by François "Papa Doc" Duvalier as he rose to power in Haiti. The brutality and kleptocratic behavior of Duvalier's administration, while not unknown in pre-occupation Haiti, had been honed to a fine point under the Americans' regime. The nightmarish Duvalier and his corrupt son and successor, Jean-Claude ("Baby Doc"), fertilized the terrain on which Haiti as a failed state would grow."

Amy Wilentz, 2015

 

"A relatively few Americans knew what wealthy white Haitians were doing to poor Haitians through their black surrogates in the years between 1957 and the coup of February 29, 2004. With the unpublicized support of the bourgeoisie, François (Papa Doc) Duvalier and his dreaded macoutes killed an estimated 50,000 poor blacks during his rule. His son, Jean-Claude, took up where his father left off. Even after Jean-Claude's expulsion from the country in February 1986, the slaughter of the pro-democracy black poor continued unabated."

Randall Robinson in his book "An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President"

 

"Haiti is best understood as a successfully failed state. As of last estimate, 65% of Haiti's government revenue comes from international agencies. 84% of its rice grown abroad. This is because of U.S. and other Northern countries' economic policies, wherein Haiti's ability to feed itself with domestic rice production was wiped out by Washington-subsidized imports that U.S. agribusiness has profited from. At Ronald Reagan's behest, Haiti initiated a series of neoliberal measures in the 1980s, including trade liberalization, privatization and decreasing investment in agriculture, that led to the disappearance of Haiti's cotton and sugar export industries. During the 1990s, the U.S. conditioned its food aid ? sent to alleviate a hunger crisis ? with demands that Haiti lower its tariffs and open its markets to U.S. imports. This subsidized U.S. rice was much cheaper than Haitian rice, forcing local farmers out of business. Over the same period, Haiti became increasingly more reliant on the International Financial Institutions, which imposed more neoliberal conditions on its help. Since 1980, when Haiti started receiving the World Banks' help in earnest, its per capita Gross Domestic Product has shrunk by 38.3%. Haiti is left with a 1.4 billion dollar multinational debt. In addition to draining resources from needed sectors ? such as health, education, or developing national production, this debt has served as leverage for the IMF and World Bank to impose even more neoliberal measures."

Mark Schuller, an anthropologist at Vassar College, 2008

 

"We should be wary of the role of international NGOs. While many NGOs are trying to address the crisis, the U.S. and other governments are funneling aid to them in order to undermine Haitians' democratic right to self-determination. The international NGOs are unaccountable to either the Haitian state or Haitian population. So the aid funneled through them further weakens what little hold Haitians have on their own society."

Ashley Smith

 

"While the real economy [in Haiti] had been driven into bankruptcy under the brunt of the IMF reforms, the narcotics transshipment trade continues to flourish. According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Haiti remains "the major drug trans-shipment country for the entire Caribbean region, funneling huge shipments of cocaine from Colombia to the United States." (US House of Representatives, Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources Subcommittee, FDHC Transcripts, 12 April 2000).
It is estimated that Haiti is now responsible for 14 percent of all the cocaine entering the United States, representing billions of dollars of revenue for organized crime and US financial institutions, which launder vast amounts of dirty money. The global trade in narcotics is estimated to be of the order of 500 billion dollars.
Much of this transshipment trade goes directly to Miami, which also constitutes a haven for the recycling of dirty money into bona fide investments, e.g. in real estate and other related activities."

Michel Chossudovsky

 

"Thirty years ago, Haiti imported almost no rice. Today, Haiti imports nearly all of its rice. It even imports sugar, even though it was the sugar-growing capital of the Caribbean. And the reason is that in order to get these loans, which they need desperately to be able to survive, that they had to open up their markets to competition.
... The United States exports over 200 million metric tons of rice every year to Haiti... And the reason is that our rice is cheaper than the rice that they could grow there themselves, because our rice is so heavily subsidized. A billion dollars a year of taxpayer money goes to rice farmers in the United States, plus we have a tariff ... that adds between three and 24 percent protection for our rice farmers. And as a result, the rich and powerful country of the United States, along with other rich and powerful countries in the world, have just really bullied these small countries into accepting our rice. And as the rice from the United States came in, it destroyed the ability of farmers in Haiti to be able to grow rice. And as a consequence, the country now depends totally on imported rice."

Bill Quigley, 2008

 

"Since 1915, the United States has treated Haitian governments as rubber stamps for US policy, American businesses working in Haiti and Haitian-run businesses friendly to American interests. For almost the entire twentieth century, only US-approved Haitians could be president. The embassy looked the other way at internal political repression, to say nothing of continuing starvation in the countryside, as long as Haitian governments were friendly - or at least anticommunist, like Papa Doc's. Any leader who seemed to have an agenda that put the Haitian people first was thrown out."

Amy Wilentz, 2015

 

"After the Haitian slave revolution which concluded in January, 1804, Haiti became the second free country in the Western World (after the United States), and the first black republic. However, the United States was still a slave nation, as was England. While France had freed the Haitian slaves during the revolution, France and other European nations had slaves in Africa and Asia. The international community decided that Haiti's model of a nation of freed slaves was a dangerous precedent. An international boycott of Haitian goods and commerce plunged the Haitian economy into chaos.
It is difficult to measure the exact impact of this international conspiracy. Here was a nation of ex-slaves trying to rise to democratic self-rule, rising to run an economy in which the masses had only served as slaves before. The international boycott of Haitian products at this time was devastating for Haiti's long-term economic development."

Bob Corbett, Director of "People To People", 1999

 

"The effort to weaken, demoralize and then overthrow Lavalas [the social/political movement that allowed Aristide to achieve the Presidency of Haiti] in the first years of the twenty-first century was perhaps the most successful exercise of neo-imperial sabotage since the toppling of Nicaragua's Sandinistas in 1990. In many ways it was much more successful, at least in the short-term, than previous international triumphs in Iraq (2003), Panama (1989), Grenada (1983), Chile (1973), the Congo (1960), Guatemala (1954) or Iran (1953). Not only did the coup of 2004 topple one of the most popular governments in Latin America but it managed to topple it in a manner that wasn't widely criticized or even recognized as a coup at all."

Peter Hallward in his book "Damning the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment"

 

"Few people anywhere have suffered more for so long, yet endure and keep struggling for change. For brief periods under Jean-Bertand Aristide, they got it until a US-led February 29, 2004 coup d'etat forced him into exile where he remains Haiti's symbolic leader.
UN paramilitaries [MINUSTAH] occupy the country . Washington effectively controls it.
... Haitians suffer dearly as a result, deeply impoverished, at times starving, denied the most basic essentials, plagued by violence, a brutal occupier, police repression, an odious and onerous debt, and exploitive sweatshop conditions for those lucky enough to have a job in a country plagued by unemployment and deprivation."

Stephen Lendman, 2009

 

"In many ways, the people (first-world diplomats, IFI economists, USAID consultants, IRI mediators, CIA analysts, media specialists, ex-military personnel, security advisors, police trainers, aid-workers, NGO staff) ... managed to back one of the most popular political leaders in Latin America i[Haitian president Jean-Bertande Aristide] nto a corner from which he couldn't escape. They managed not only to overthrow but also to discredit the most progressive government in Haitian history, and they managed to attack this government in ways that were rarely perceived (by mainstream commentators) as aggressive at all. They managed to disguise a deliberate and elaborate political intervention as a routine contribution to the natural order of things. Ten years after his triumphant return from exile in 1994, Aristide's enemies not only drove him out of office but into an apparently definitive disgrace."

Peter Hallward in his book "Damning the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment"

 

"There are some 10,000 NGOs operating in Haiti - a country smaller than Maryland with a population of 10 million.
... These NGOs, each with its own projects, don't operate under any kind of umbrella; nor are they truly regulated. What they do, unintentionally, is substitute their own services for the services that a government should provide. They prop up the kleptocratic state, a mechanism for distribution of corruption."

Amy Wilentz, 2015

 

"The last and only Haitian leader strongly committed to putting the welfare of the Haitian people before that of the domestic and international financial mafia was President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Being of a socialist persuasion, Aristide was, naturally, kept from power by the United States - twice; first by Bill Clinton, then by George W. Bush, the two men appointed by President Obama to head the earthquake relief effort."

William Blum

 

"Haiti is best understood as a successfully failed state. As of last estimate, 65% of Haiti's government revenue comes from international agencies, 84% of its rice grown abroad. This is because of U.S. and other Northern countries' economic policies wherein Haiti's ability to feed itself with domestic rice production was wiped out by Washington-subsidized imports that U.S. agribusiness has profited from. At Ronald Reagan's behest, Haiti initiated a series of neoliberal measures in the 1980s, including trade liberalization, privatization and decreasing investment in agriculture, that led to the disappearance of Haiti's cotton and sugar export industries. During the 1990s, the U.S. conditioned its food aid ? sent to alleviate a hunger crisis ? with demands that Haiti lower its tariffs and open its markets to U.S. imports. This subsidized U.S. rice was much cheaper than Haitian rice, forcing local farmers out of business. Over the same period, Haiti became increasingly more reliant on the International Financial Institutions, which imposed more neoliberal conditions on its help. Since 1980, when Haiti started receiving the Banks' help in earnest, its per capita Gross Domestic Product has shrunk by 38.3%. Haiti is left with a 1.4 billion dollar multinational debt, with a debt service next year of almost 80 million. In addition to draining resources from needed sectors ? such as health, education, or developing national production, this debt has served as leverage for the IMF and World Bank to impose even more neoliberal measures."

Mark Schuller, an anthropologist at Vassar College, 2008

 

"Immediately after the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, the Clintons collected about $30 million for Haiti through the Clinton Foundation. From the foundation's taxes, we know that only about 10 percent of funds were spent on charity, so only about $3 million were spent on Haiti, and it is unclear how. There were also about $54 million from the Bush-Clinton Fund, but most of that money was spent on mortgages, microfinance, and on refurbishing and building luxury hotels.
... With Haitian President Michel Martelly in place, the Clintons did whatever they wanted. By July 2011, three months before the IHRC's [Hillary Clinton's Interim Haiti Recovery Commission] 18-month mandate was over, they had collected $3.2 billion and spent only $84 million doing only five out of 75 projects they had planned. In a meeting on August 11, 2011, the Chair of the Senate Public Works Committee accused the IHRC of taking credit for projects that had been funded before it even existed. The IHRC was not renewed by Haiti's parliament, but the Clintons kept right on raising money. By 2012, the IHRC had collected $5.9 billion out of a total of $9.5 billion of pledged donations.
... More than 96 percent of Haiti's [2010 earthquake] reconstruction funds have disappeared. If the Clintons are tried under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) and found guilty, some of this money could be recovered, at the least by confiscating their properties."

Dady Chery, a Haitian-born journalist

 

"Under Ronald Reagan, USAID and the World Bank set up very explicit programs, explicitly designed to destroy Haitian agriculture. They didn't cover it up. They gave an argument that Haiti shouldn't have an agricultural system, it should have assembly plants; women working to stitch baseballs in miserable conditions."

Noam Chomsky

 

"Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a reformist priest, was elected to the presidency in Haiti in 1990, then ousted in a military coup eight months later in 1991 by men on the CIA payroll... In 1994 the Clinton White House found itself in the awkward position of having to pretend - because of all their rhetoric about "democracy" - that they supported the democratically-elected Aristide's return to power. After delaying his return for more than two years, Washington finally had its military restore Aristide to office, but only after obliging the priest to guarantee that after his term ended he would not remain in office to make up the time lost because of the coup; that he would not seek to help the poor at the expense of the rich; and that he would stick closely to free-market economics. This meant that Haiti would continue to be the assembly plant of the Western Hemisphere, with its workers receiving starvation wages."

William Blum

 

"In 2006 elections, the Haitian masses voted in longtime Aristide ally René Préval as president. But Préval has been a weak figure who collaborated with U.S. plans for the country and failed to address the growing social crisis.
In fact, the U.S., UN and other imperial powers effectively bypassed the Préval government [of Haiti] and instead poured money into NGOs. "Haiti now has the highest per capita presence of NGOs in the world," says Yves Engler. The Préval government has become a political fig leaf, behind which the real decisions are made by the imperial powers, and implemented through their chosen international NGOs."

Ashley Smith

 

"Haiti is called "the Republic of NGOs," with over 10,000 operating (according to World Bank estimates) for its nine million people, the highest per capita presence worldwide in all sectors of activity and society, many with sizable budgets. Yet their numbers beg the question. With that abundant firepower, why is Haiti the poorest country in the hemisphere, one of the poorest in the world."

Stephen Lendman, 2010

 

"Under Bill Clinton, Haiti's leaders were pressured to reduce the country's longstanding tariffs on imported food (including rice) from 50 percent to about 3 percent. The United States then began dumping cheap, taxpayer-subsidized surplus rice on the Haitian market, ostensibly for humanitarian reasons, but actually so that it could dispose of an otherwise unsellable product.
... The cheaper US rice undercut and effectively destroyed Haitian rice farming. A country that was largely self-sufficient in this staple in the 1980s was importing 80 percent of its rice by 2012."

Amy Wilentz, 2015

 

HONDURAS

"On June 28, 2009, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was awakened by gunfire. A coup was carried out by US-trained military officers, including graduates of the infamous US Army School of the Americas (WHINSEC) in Georgia. President Zelaya was illegally taken to Costa Rica.
Democracy in Honduras ended as a de facto government of the rich and powerful seized control. A sham election backed by the US confirmed the leadership of the coup powers. The US and powerful lobbyists continue to roam the hemisphere trying to convince other Latin American countries to normalize relations with the coup government."

Bill Quigley and Laura Raymond, 2010

 

"I have first-hand information that the [United States] empire, through the U.S. Southern Command, made the coup d'etat in Honduras."

Bolivian President Evo Morales, July 2009

 

"Throughout 2008, John Negroponte, US Ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985 and a key architect of the Reagan administration's contra wars and military build-up in Central America, was building in Central America an intelligence and diplomacy network charged with the mission of regaining the positions lost by the US as well as of neutralizing left regimes and ALBA integration initiative.
At present the US ambassadors to Latin American are Negroponte's people. All of them have practical experience in destabilizing and subverting political regimes unfriendly to the US, launching propaganda campaigns, and creating fifth columns in the form of various NGOs."

Russian analyst Nil Nikandrov, 2009

 

"The U.S. has been intervening in Honduras since 1903, the year in which for the first time U.S. Marines landed in that country to protect North American interests in a moment of political crisis. In 1907, on the occasion of war between Honduras and Nicaragua, U.S. troops were stationed for three months in the cities of Trujillo, Ceiba, Puerto Cortes, San Pedro Sula, Laguna, and Choloma. In 1911 and 1912 they repeated the invasions, in the later case to prevent the expropriation of a railroad in Puerto Cortes. In 1919, 1924, and 1925 imperialist expeditionary forces again invaded Honduras, always with the same pretext - protect the lives and property of North American citizens residing in the country. But the largest invasion occurred in 1983 when, under the direction of a sinister figure, Ambassador John Negroponte, the huge base of operations was established from which the U.S. launched its reactionary offensive against the Sandinista government and the Salvadoran Farabundo Marti guerrilla movement."

Professor Atilio Borón

 

"In June 2009, the Honduran military bundled democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya into a plane, made a stop at a U.S. airbase, and sent him into exile in Costa Rica. Zelaya then snuck back into Honduras, living under the protection of the Brazilian embassy. The U.S., standing virtually alone in the hemisphere and the world, refused to call the removal of President Zelaya a coup, and announced that Washington would recognize the results of last weekend's elections to succeed Zelaya even though they were held under military martial law. Hondurans who opposed the coup had no one to vote for, so of course, the oligarchy's candidate won in a very low turnout."

Glen Ford - Black Agenda Radio

 

"It is unlikely the Honduras coup took place without the knowledge of the U.S. military, which has a base in that country. The coup is a message from Latin American and U.S. 'ultraconservatives' to keep leftist governments in line."

Ecuador's President Rafael Correa. July 2009

"The democratically elected president [of Honduras Manuel] Zelaya, had called for a new constitution to replace the old one that was really set up by the oligarchy in favor of the very wealthy and the international companies. He also called for a 60 percent increase in the bottom wage rate, which had a huge impact on Dole and Chiquita, two of the biggest employers in that company. They, along with a number of companies that have sweatshops in Honduras, strongly objected, very much the same way that they had objected to Aristide in Haiti, when he did something similar, and called in the military. The general in charge of the military was a graduate of our School of the Americas, this, you know, school that's famous for creating dictators, and they overthrew Zelaya. It was a classic CIA-sponsored type of coup, very similar to what United Fruit had done in Guatemala in the early '50s. And, of course, United Fruit became Chiquita."

John Perkins, 2009

"Right wing American ideologues and shell NGOs based out of Washington played a critical role in the coup [in Honduras in 2009 ... and are hell bent on stopping the growing populist movements throughout Latin America from gaining more influence and power."

Bill Quigley and Laura Raymond

 

"The increase in recent years in Honduran migration to the US is a direct result of the overthrow of Manuel Zelaya, whose crime was raising the minimum wage, giving subsidies to small farmers and instituting free education."

William Blum

 

INDONESIA & EAST TIMOR

"In Indonesia in 1965 a group of young military officers attempted a coup against the U.S.-backed military establishment and murdered six of seven top military officers. The Agency seized this opportunity to overthrow Sukarno and to destroy the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI), which had three million members... Estimates of the number of deaths that occurred as a result of this CIA ... operation run from one-half million to more than one million people."

Ralph McGehee in his book "Deadly Deceits"

 

"The U.S. government played a significant role in the 1965 Indonesian genocide by supplying the names of thousands of Communist Party leaders to the Indonesian army, which hunted down the leftists and killed them."

Noam Chomsky

 

"Institutional speculators and international banks raped Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea (1997) then turned the shivering survivors over to the IMF, not to help victims, but to insure that no Western bank was stuck with non-performing loans in the devastated countries."

Chalmers Johnson

 

"East Timor declared itself independent from Portugal on November 28, 1975. Nine days later Indonesia invaded. The brutal occupation forces slaughtered an estimated 200,000 people, one third of the population of East Timor.
The U.S. government not only supplied the weapons used in the massacre but also explicitly approved the invasion. According to these records, President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger met with Suharto on December 6, 1975, and agreed with his planned attack, which was launched the next day."

John Perkins

 

"President Gerald Ford supplied the arms and gave the green light to General Suharto of Indonesia for the invasion of East Timor. President Carter rearmed the Indonesian military when their supply of arms ran low."

David Model

 

"The United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in East Timor in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success."

UN Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan

 

"General Suharto was given a green light by the United States to do what we did in East Timor. We sent the Indonesian generals everything they needed to fight a major war against somebody who doesn't have any guns."

Philip Liechty, CIA desk officer in Jakarta, Indonesia in 1975

 

 

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