Re: [Marxism] Canadian NGO's and unions sell out Haiti

[Greg Dunkel <gdunkel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I will be brief, perhaps too brief.  I certainly will answer any
questions raised  privately or on the list but I have to go to work
tomorrow.

I see two main explanations for Canada's interests and involvement in
Haiti.  The political one, coming from a lot of the usual type of
daemonization of Aristide that was mainly produced in French,
neutralized  the support he might have expected from Francophone
progressives, both in Quebec -- with its large Haitian communities in
Montreal and Quebec City -- and in France itself.

The best short example I have of this daemonization campaign against
Aristide -- in English -- come from the web site

http://www.grassrootshaiti.org/

which contains the following statement

" ...former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, whose populist and corrupt
regime bears a great deal of responsibility for the worsening crisis and
the current occupation of Haiti. Aristide and his bourgeois opposition
were equally corrupt; ..."

Grassroots Haiti is the U.S, support group for Batay Ouvriè (Workers
Struggle), an anarcho-syndicalist group which helped workers in northern
Haiti organizae and fight in 2003 & 2004, while at the same time it
called for the overthrow of Aristide's government, which was the same
demand that the Macoutes and ex-Army thugs the U.S. was organizing had.
Batay Ouvriè and its allies had the progressive credentials to get
their  propaganda against Aristide believed.  (Haïti-Progrès, a
newspaper which I contribute to from time-to-time, has had an expose of
Batay Ouvriè in its November issues.)

I generally would not publicly comment about political struggles in the
Haitian progressive movement but Batay Ouvriè and its allies have
brought their charges into the international arena and made it more
difficult to build solidarity with Haiti and its struggle against U.S.,
French and Canadian imperialism.

Canada also has its own imperialist interests in Haiti.  In "Canada in
Haiti -- Waging War on the Poor Majority" Engler & Fenton point out
"Canadian officials seemed to wholeheartedly endorse transforming Haiti
into a land that is good for business -- our business." (p 98)  They go
on to describe the interest of Canadian mining corporations in Haitian
copper. (p 98).

Canada has otherf interests in the Caribbean and Haiti and has spent,
according to the book, about as much on the occupation of Haiti as the
United States has.

I recommend the book;  it is available from

http://www.fernwoodbooks.ca

/greg
==

Michael Perelman wrote:

> Any idea why?
>
> On Wed, Dec 07, 2005 at 01:12:05PM -0500, Louis Proyect wrote:
>
>
> > http://canadiandimension.com/articles/2005/11/01/207/


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