A Review of Peter Hallward's 'Damming the Flood'

By Justin Podur, June 14, 2008, Z NET
Review of: Peter Hallward, Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment. Verso 2007.

Haiti has never had a period without interference in its sovereignty. Indeed Haiti's history could be seen as one long, heroic struggle against such interference: first to overthrow the slavers and colonizers of France (and the rest of Europe), and then to fight for sovereignty against the US, which viewed Haiti as part of its domain, to dispose of according to its own whims.

by Manuel Yang, MR Zine

This year marks the seventieth anniversary of C.L.R. James's The Black Jacobins: Touissaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. This classic account of the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1803 is one of the greatest books in the twentieth century. Its title refers to the Jacobins, the most radical element within the French Revolution who propagated, says the Oxford English Dictionary, "extreme democracy and absolute equality" -- principles fully embraced by the slaves who made history's first and only successful slave revolution in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, which afterwards they renamed Haiti.

Did He Jump or Was He Pushed? Aristide and the 2004 Coup in Haiti
by Peter Hallward
December 15, 2007
haitianalysis.com

Haiti: Leading Human Rights Activist Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine Missing for Four Months
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch Remain Silent
By Joe Emersberger
Special to The Narco News Bulletin
http://www.narconews.com/Issue48/article2935.html
December 13, 2007
Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, a prominent Haitian human rights activist, disappeared on the evening of 12 August, 2007. He is co-founder of the Trant Septanm (“September 30”) Foundation, an organization originally formed to help the victims of the 1991 coup in Haiti.

December 14, 2007
People Are Going Missing in Haiti
What Happened to Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine?
By BEN TERRALL
http://counterpunch.org/terrall12142007.html
On December 11, 2007, the Bay Area-based Haiti Action Committee held a demonstration in downtown San Francisco in solidarity with Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, disappeared Haitian human rights advocate. Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine was last seen on August 12, shortly after meeting with a delegation from the United States.

HAITI LIBERTE
"Justice. Verite. Independence."
* THIS WEEK IN HAITI *
September 5-11, 2007
Vol. 1, No. 7
ANOTHER OCCUPATION EXTENSION LOOMS
by Kim Ives
The United Nations Security Council mandate for the UN's military occupation of Haiti runs out on October 15, 2007. Now the UN has cranked up its public relations machinery, generating a flurry of conferences, declarations, and appointments, all aimed at selling the longest possible mandate extension to the Haitian and world public.
The campaign to prolong the occupation was kicked off by none other than Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary General, during a visit to Haiti on Aug. 2 (see Haiti Liberte, Vol. 1, No. 3, Aug. 8, 2007). During his visit, he declared that the United Nations Mission to Stabilize Haiti (MINUSTAH) "will not leave until Haiti's future is assured," saying that would require "at least another year."

UN Arrested 40 Ahead of Harper's Haiti Visit
Many demonstrators remain in jail
by Stuart Neatby
The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca
Forty Haitian demonstrators were arrested by UN soldiers hours before the arrival of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the Haitian slum neighbourhood of Cite Soleil on July 20. Haiti was the last stop for the Prime Minister's Latin American tour, which also included stops in Colombia, Chile, and Barbados. The protest had been organized by residents of Cite Soleil in response to the visit of the Canadian Prime Minister, according to Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, a protest organizer and director of the Haiti-based September 30th Foundation.

ZNet Commentary
The Harper-Uribe Handshake July 22, 2007
By Justin Podur
I
The photo in Colombia's daily newspaper "El Tiempo" from earlier this week, of Canadian Prime Minister Harper and Colombian President Uribe gazing into each other's eyes, locked in the sort of handshake the Canadian PM gives his sons in the morning, turned a few Canadian and Colombian stomachs. Uribe's government, after all, is infamous for having had its politicians heading off to jail for their collusion and links to paramilitaries that are steeped in massacre, assassination, kidnapping, and narcotrafficking. Paramilitary chiefs like Salvatore Mancuso have given evidence of their connections to politicians. Computer files from paramilitary leaders contain memos of signed agreements between Uribe's supporters and paramilitary killers. The massacres have been spectacular - paramilitaries cut people up with chainsaws and play soccer with people's heads. They've used terror to clear territories of their rural and indigenous inhabitants and concentrate land in the hands of landowners - some of whom are these same politicians - who have contracts with corporations to produce various things, the hottest one being biofuels. Palm and sugar cane plantations stand where campesinos used to live, and fortunes are being made speculating on the fuels of the future. If ripping up most of the Canadian province of Alberta for oil sands development can make Canada an "energy superpower", as Harper said, perhaps slaughtering tens of thousands of Colombians and displacing 3.5 million of them for palm and sugar plantations can make Colombia one as well. Perhaps Canada, with its oil sands and militarization, Harper told Latin Americans, could be a better model for the region than Chavez's Venezuela, with its serious efforts to address poverty and inequality.

February 28, 2007 (Seven Oaks, www.sevenoaksmag.com)
Three years later: Canada must be held accountable for Haiti coup
by Derrick O'Keefe
Canada has made a significant contribution to stability in Haiti,” noted
George W. Bush, in remarks to the media after meeting with Prime Minister
Stephen Harper in July 2006 (1).
Three years after Canada helped lead a coup d'état against the
democratically elected government of Haiti, almost no one in Ottawa has been
held accountable for this crime against the sovereignty of the hemisphere’s
poorest nation.

Massive demonstrations in Haiti catch UN by surprise
(HIP) — Challenging recent assertions made by the United Nations that the
Lavalas movement is dead, crowds estimated at well over 100,000 took to
the streets of seven major cities throughout Haiti on February 7 to
demand an end to the UN occupation, freedom for political prisoners and
the return of exiled president Aristide. Lavalas is the political
movement of Haiti's desperately poor majority and the political party
of president Jean-Bertrand Aristide who was ousted on February 29, 2004
in a coup reportedly backed by the United States, France and Canada.