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Sunday, January 17, 2010
You Need To Check Out These Important Links-Your Children Are Depending On You!
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The Secret History of CIA
Intelligence in Recent Public Literature
By Joseph J. Trento. Roseville, CA: Prima Publishing, 2001. 542 pages.
Reviewed by Len M.
In terms of respect for facts and an understanding of the intelligence collection and analysis process, The Secret History of CIA is the worst book yet purporting to provide an account of the Agency's past. It outdoes Edward Epstein by an order of magnitude.1 It is even worse than the author's previous effort, Widows, which also floundered through huge territory.2 Let me recommend right off that anyone interested in something this inaccurate and uninformed wait until it hits the "remainder" pile and get it for three dollars, as I did Widows. Annuitants from the Soviet intelligence services are the only audience likely to enjoy the book, and they will roll in the aisles laughing.
To correct all the errors would require writing another book, probably longer than this one. Then a second volume would be needed to explain to the author the flaws in his analysis. The book does not deserve that much attention, and corrections to the record would never reach the same readership, anyway. To start with, the title is entirely misleading. The book does not deal with "CIA history." After a brief rehash of the Agency's origins, it launches into a disjointed account of clandestine operations. Soviet counterintelligence operations predominate, but the author patches in US operations in Berlin, Vietnam, Cuba, and Chile. Actually, it is hard to know what to call such a hodgepodge. The title was probably selected to pander to Cold War scavengers and those who love to hate the CIA. My own title would be Garbled Accounts and Ingenious Interpretations of Selected CIA Operations. Most of the footnotes refer to 1988-1990, so it would appear that much of the book is based on interviews done for Widows and perhaps some commentary that came in after the publication of that book.
A major problem is that the author has no intelligence experience. Putting aside the unreliability of the substance, the author manifests not the least understanding of the elementary terms used in intelligence. A knowledgeable reader is faced with the mental gymnastics of trying to straighten out endless anachronisms, non sequiturs, and pregnant pauses, as well as a need to translate everyday terms—such as "defector," "agent," "double agent," "covert," and "clandestine"—into what these individuals actually were. The unforgivable error that even a neophyte in the intelligence literature cottage industry would not commit is to call CIA officers "agents." Trento does that. His definition of "bona fides" is so weak that even Webster's would have helped.3 These definitional problems by themselves should serve as a warning to users: how could the author hope to understand the most complex intelligence cases of our time when he came away from interviewing the various sources listed in the footnotes with so little understanding of the basic terms those sources were using? The answer is: he did not understand, and so went off in search of explanations and extraneous fragments to fill in the inevitable inconsistencies and gaps. Very deep water, indeed, even for the baptized. The difficulty arises, first, in sorting out just what the author was told; then, in divining whether the source possessed the knowledge that he claimed or the background to make the judgment that he made; and, finally, in separating the author's interpolations and extrapolations from that. Trento presumes to superior knowledge and analytic talent that qualifies him to evaluate clandestine operations, analyze the product of those operations, and then make independent assessments of crucial aspects of Soviet internal politics and strategy.
Then there are the names; and not just the Russian names. A disturbing number are misspelled at least once—some several times, some two different ways—even though most of these names have appeared before in scholarly works. Surely the spelling of a name of a principal player in a book should be correct. If a reader cannot get beyond the names without a caution light flashing, why should he or she trust the substance of the narrative? Since most of the meaningful substance in this book has been covered in previous, better- researched books—by David Martin, Thomas Mangold, David Wise, and Jerrold Schechter and Peter Deriabin 4 —and in essays in Studies in Intelligence, and the Central Intelligence Retirees Association publication, it would not have required too much humility to copy the names correctly, along with a generous helping of the facts.
So how does one approach this dubious mosaic? It is not difficult in my case. In 1988, with approval from the Directorate of Operations' senior leadership, I spoke to Trento and his wife regarding Nikolay Artamonov [aka Shadrin], a Soviet destroyer captain who provided Washington with military intelligence of immense value. My goal was to clear up some of the errors in Henry Hurt's Shadrin: The Spy Who Never Came Back.5 Hurt's book now looks like a fine bit of writing in contrast to Trento's tangled version. I spoke with the Trentos in sincerity and trust, believing that the information I gave them was pertinent to their research and would find its proper place in the chapters they were writing about one of the vital contributors to US intelligence holdings on the USSR in the most perilous decade of the Cold War. I was devastated when the book Widows appeared with an interpretation of Artamonov's sacrifice that destroyed his reputation with no basis in fact, the authors having drawn their information entirely from a version disseminated by Artamonov's worst enemy, and ours—the KGB.
Most writers who undertake to make qualitative judgments about CIA activities tend to overlook a major factor that governs our work—we are directed to undertake certain tasks, often with restrictions on what we may or may not do to accomplish them. Another significant gulf between a CIA analyst (in both the collection and analysis directorates) and a writer who undertakes to collect individual accounts, piece them together, and try to make sense of them, is that the insider is working against a background and learning curve of countless events, vigorous disagreements and discussions, and an extensive array of overt, imagery, and signals intelligence. This was never more true than with the USSR. No event occurred in a vacuum. Cumulative, reinforcing reporting from a long string of valuable defectors, most of whose contributions have never been published, refutes all of the "analysis" in the two books by this author. Granted, no outside writer can match this internal knowledge base. A few, however, have managed to do well skating along the top of it, such as Martin, Mangold, and Wise, mentioned before.
It would seem that no useful purpose could be served by further review of the endless errors, misguided assumptions, and presumptions of this book, but perhaps I can provide at least one more example to illustrate why the reader will gain no reliable new insight into the CIA's past from slogging through The Secret History of CIA. The author maintains that Oleg Penkovsky was sent to us in 1960 as a Soviet deception operation. Almost everything Trento says about the Penkovsky case is inaccurate, except for the brief sketch on Penkovsky's trouble getting to us, which indicates that the author had not read Schechter and Deriabin. Having prepared the intelligence agenda for each meeting with Penkovsky, briefed and debriefed the case officers on the spot, prepared or supervised every report which came from him, and met with analysts receiving the reports to discuss their evaluations and get their requirements, I find the account of the operation in this book to be bizarre.
Let the reader beware of the other chapters.
Footnotes
1 Edward Epstein, Deception (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989).
2. William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento, and Joseph J. Trento, Widows (New York: Crown Publishers, 1989).
3. Webster's II New Riverside University Dictionary defines "bona fides" as "authentic credentials," as in "a defector whose bona fides could not be checked."
4. See: David C. Martin, Wilderness of Mirrors (New York: Harper and Row, 1980); Thomas Mangold, Cold Warrior (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991); David Wise, The Spy Who Got Away (New York: Random House, 1988); and Jerrold L. Schecter and Peter S. Deriabin, The Spy Who Saved the World (New York: Charles Schribner's Sons, 1992).
5. Henry Hurt, Shadrin: The Spy Who Never Came Back (New York: Reader's Digest Press, 1981).
Len M. The author served in the CIA Directorate of Operations for more than 30 years. This article is unclassified in its entirety.
Historical Document
Intelligence in Recent Public Literature
By Joseph J. Trento. Roseville, CA: Prima Publishing, 2001. 542 pages.
Reviewed by Len M.
In terms of respect for facts and an understanding of the intelligence collection and analysis process, The Secret History of CIA is the worst book yet purporting to provide an account of the Agency's past. It outdoes Edward Epstein by an order of magnitude.1 It is even worse than the author's previous effort, Widows, which also floundered through huge territory.2 Let me recommend right off that anyone interested in something this inaccurate and uninformed wait until it hits the "remainder" pile and get it for three dollars, as I did Widows. Annuitants from the Soviet intelligence services are the only audience likely to enjoy the book, and they will roll in the aisles laughing.
To correct all the errors would require writing another book, probably longer than this one. Then a second volume would be needed to explain to the author the flaws in his analysis. The book does not deserve that much attention, and corrections to the record would never reach the same readership, anyway. To start with, the title is entirely misleading. The book does not deal with "CIA history." After a brief rehash of the Agency's origins, it launches into a disjointed account of clandestine operations. Soviet counterintelligence operations predominate, but the author patches in US operations in Berlin, Vietnam, Cuba, and Chile. Actually, it is hard to know what to call such a hodgepodge. The title was probably selected to pander to Cold War scavengers and those who love to hate the CIA. My own title would be Garbled Accounts and Ingenious Interpretations of Selected CIA Operations. Most of the footnotes refer to 1988-1990, so it would appear that much of the book is based on interviews done for Widows and perhaps some commentary that came in after the publication of that book.
A major problem is that the author has no intelligence experience. Putting aside the unreliability of the substance, the author manifests not the least understanding of the elementary terms used in intelligence. A knowledgeable reader is faced with the mental gymnastics of trying to straighten out endless anachronisms, non sequiturs, and pregnant pauses, as well as a need to translate everyday terms—such as "defector," "agent," "double agent," "covert," and "clandestine"—into what these individuals actually were. The unforgivable error that even a neophyte in the intelligence literature cottage industry would not commit is to call CIA officers "agents." Trento does that. His definition of "bona fides" is so weak that even Webster's would have helped.3 These definitional problems by themselves should serve as a warning to users: how could the author hope to understand the most complex intelligence cases of our time when he came away from interviewing the various sources listed in the footnotes with so little understanding of the basic terms those sources were using? The answer is: he did not understand, and so went off in search of explanations and extraneous fragments to fill in the inevitable inconsistencies and gaps. Very deep water, indeed, even for the baptized. The difficulty arises, first, in sorting out just what the author was told; then, in divining whether the source possessed the knowledge that he claimed or the background to make the judgment that he made; and, finally, in separating the author's interpolations and extrapolations from that. Trento presumes to superior knowledge and analytic talent that qualifies him to evaluate clandestine operations, analyze the product of those operations, and then make independent assessments of crucial aspects of Soviet internal politics and strategy.
Then there are the names; and not just the Russian names. A disturbing number are misspelled at least once—some several times, some two different ways—even though most of these names have appeared before in scholarly works. Surely the spelling of a name of a principal player in a book should be correct. If a reader cannot get beyond the names without a caution light flashing, why should he or she trust the substance of the narrative? Since most of the meaningful substance in this book has been covered in previous, better- researched books—by David Martin, Thomas Mangold, David Wise, and Jerrold Schechter and Peter Deriabin 4 —and in essays in Studies in Intelligence, and the Central Intelligence Retirees Association publication, it would not have required too much humility to copy the names correctly, along with a generous helping of the facts.
So how does one approach this dubious mosaic? It is not difficult in my case. In 1988, with approval from the Directorate of Operations' senior leadership, I spoke to Trento and his wife regarding Nikolay Artamonov [aka Shadrin], a Soviet destroyer captain who provided Washington with military intelligence of immense value. My goal was to clear up some of the errors in Henry Hurt's Shadrin: The Spy Who Never Came Back.5 Hurt's book now looks like a fine bit of writing in contrast to Trento's tangled version. I spoke with the Trentos in sincerity and trust, believing that the information I gave them was pertinent to their research and would find its proper place in the chapters they were writing about one of the vital contributors to US intelligence holdings on the USSR in the most perilous decade of the Cold War. I was devastated when the book Widows appeared with an interpretation of Artamonov's sacrifice that destroyed his reputation with no basis in fact, the authors having drawn their information entirely from a version disseminated by Artamonov's worst enemy, and ours—the KGB.
Most writers who undertake to make qualitative judgments about CIA activities tend to overlook a major factor that governs our work—we are directed to undertake certain tasks, often with restrictions on what we may or may not do to accomplish them. Another significant gulf between a CIA analyst (in both the collection and analysis directorates) and a writer who undertakes to collect individual accounts, piece them together, and try to make sense of them, is that the insider is working against a background and learning curve of countless events, vigorous disagreements and discussions, and an extensive array of overt, imagery, and signals intelligence. This was never more true than with the USSR. No event occurred in a vacuum. Cumulative, reinforcing reporting from a long string of valuable defectors, most of whose contributions have never been published, refutes all of the "analysis" in the two books by this author. Granted, no outside writer can match this internal knowledge base. A few, however, have managed to do well skating along the top of it, such as Martin, Mangold, and Wise, mentioned before.
It would seem that no useful purpose could be served by further review of the endless errors, misguided assumptions, and presumptions of this book, but perhaps I can provide at least one more example to illustrate why the reader will gain no reliable new insight into the CIA's past from slogging through The Secret History of CIA. The author maintains that Oleg Penkovsky was sent to us in 1960 as a Soviet deception operation. Almost everything Trento says about the Penkovsky case is inaccurate, except for the brief sketch on Penkovsky's trouble getting to us, which indicates that the author had not read Schechter and Deriabin. Having prepared the intelligence agenda for each meeting with Penkovsky, briefed and debriefed the case officers on the spot, prepared or supervised every report which came from him, and met with analysts receiving the reports to discuss their evaluations and get their requirements, I find the account of the operation in this book to be bizarre.
Let the reader beware of the other chapters.
Footnotes
1 Edward Epstein, Deception (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989).
2. William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento, and Joseph J. Trento, Widows (New York: Crown Publishers, 1989).
3. Webster's II New Riverside University Dictionary defines "bona fides" as "authentic credentials," as in "a defector whose bona fides could not be checked."
4. See: David C. Martin, Wilderness of Mirrors (New York: Harper and Row, 1980); Thomas Mangold, Cold Warrior (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991); David Wise, The Spy Who Got Away (New York: Random House, 1988); and Jerrold L. Schecter and Peter S. Deriabin, The Spy Who Saved the World (New York: Charles Schribner's Sons, 1992).
5. Henry Hurt, Shadrin: The Spy Who Never Came Back (New York: Reader's Digest Press, 1981).
Len M. The author served in the CIA Directorate of Operations for more than 30 years. This article is unclassified in its entirety.
Historical Document
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The cost to U.S. taxpayers of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 has topped $1 trillion, and President Barack Obama is expected to request another $33 billion to fund more troops this year.
Over two-thirds of the money has been spent on the conflict in Iraq since 2003. This year is the first in which more funds are being spent in Afghanistan than Iraq, as the pace of U.S. military operations slows in Iraq and quickens in Afghanistan.
HOW MUCH HAS BEEN SPENT ALREADY?
Congress has approved $1.05 trillion dollars for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the National Priorities Project, a nonpartisan budget research group that has a continuously running war cost counter on its website.
The tally topped $1 trillion last month, when U.S. lawmakers approved the fiscal 2010 defense spending bill that included $128 billion to be spent on the two conflicts through September 30. The trillion-dollar total includes war-related costs incurred by the State Department, like embassy security.
HOW MUCH WENT FOR IRAQ AND HOW MUCH FOR AFGHANISTAN?
The lion's share of the spending -- $747.3 billion -- has been allocated to the war in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion there in 2003.
The other $299 billion has been for Afghanistan, where the United States invaded to fight al Qaeda and topple the Taliban after the September 11 attacks in 2001.
War funding for fiscal 2010, which ends September 30, included $72.3 billion for Afghanistan and $64.5 billion for Iraq, making this the first year that Afghanistan was more expensive, the National Priorities Project said.
HOW MUCH MORE WILL THESE OPERATIONS COST?
Obama announced in December he was adding 30,000 more U.S. troops to the Afghan war effort to join 68,000 already there fighting a resurgent Taliban. Defense officials say he will shortly ask Congress for $33 billion to pay for the surge, when he sends lawmakers his budget request.
That would take care of 2010. Future expenses are a question mark, partly because troop levels are uncertain. Obama says he wants to start withdrawing forces from Afghanistan in mid-2011, but this will depend in part on conditions on the ground. No deadline for leaving has been set.
Estimates of the cost per troop per year in Afghanistan vary from $500,000 to $1 million depending on whether expenditures on troop housing and equipment are included along with pay, food and fuel. Medical costs for the injured and veterans' compensation balloon as time goes on.
In Iraq, the U.S. force is supposed to fall to 50,000 by the end of August, from some 115,000 last month. The 50,000 can remain until the end of 2011, under an agreement with Baghdad.
A year ago the Congressional Budget Office projected that additional costs for the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts could be $867 billion over the next decade, if combined troop levels fall to 75,000 by about 2013.
WHAT ARE THE POLITICAL RISKS?
Obama's Democratic Party has the majority in Congress but is divided over the wisdom of continuing the Afghan war. This means he needs Republicans to get congressional approval of the next tranche of funds sometime this spring.
He is expected to get that approval, in part because many lawmakers who don't approve of sending more combat troops are loath to cut off funds to soldiers in the field.
"I think that in general the American people, while obviously this is very difficult financially for us, will continue to support the troops that are there and the Congress will reflect that," Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin said this week.
But with Americans tiring of war and getting more concerned about U.S. indebtedness, political pressures are expected to grow for winding down U.S. military operations and their costs in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Over two-thirds of the money has been spent on the conflict in Iraq since 2003. This year is the first in which more funds are being spent in Afghanistan than Iraq, as the pace of U.S. military operations slows in Iraq and quickens in Afghanistan.
HOW MUCH HAS BEEN SPENT ALREADY?
Congress has approved $1.05 trillion dollars for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the National Priorities Project, a nonpartisan budget research group that has a continuously running war cost counter on its website.
The tally topped $1 trillion last month, when U.S. lawmakers approved the fiscal 2010 defense spending bill that included $128 billion to be spent on the two conflicts through September 30. The trillion-dollar total includes war-related costs incurred by the State Department, like embassy security.
HOW MUCH WENT FOR IRAQ AND HOW MUCH FOR AFGHANISTAN?
The lion's share of the spending -- $747.3 billion -- has been allocated to the war in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion there in 2003.
The other $299 billion has been for Afghanistan, where the United States invaded to fight al Qaeda and topple the Taliban after the September 11 attacks in 2001.
War funding for fiscal 2010, which ends September 30, included $72.3 billion for Afghanistan and $64.5 billion for Iraq, making this the first year that Afghanistan was more expensive, the National Priorities Project said.
HOW MUCH MORE WILL THESE OPERATIONS COST?
Obama announced in December he was adding 30,000 more U.S. troops to the Afghan war effort to join 68,000 already there fighting a resurgent Taliban. Defense officials say he will shortly ask Congress for $33 billion to pay for the surge, when he sends lawmakers his budget request.
That would take care of 2010. Future expenses are a question mark, partly because troop levels are uncertain. Obama says he wants to start withdrawing forces from Afghanistan in mid-2011, but this will depend in part on conditions on the ground. No deadline for leaving has been set.
Estimates of the cost per troop per year in Afghanistan vary from $500,000 to $1 million depending on whether expenditures on troop housing and equipment are included along with pay, food and fuel. Medical costs for the injured and veterans' compensation balloon as time goes on.
In Iraq, the U.S. force is supposed to fall to 50,000 by the end of August, from some 115,000 last month. The 50,000 can remain until the end of 2011, under an agreement with Baghdad.
A year ago the Congressional Budget Office projected that additional costs for the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts could be $867 billion over the next decade, if combined troop levels fall to 75,000 by about 2013.
WHAT ARE THE POLITICAL RISKS?
Obama's Democratic Party has the majority in Congress but is divided over the wisdom of continuing the Afghan war. This means he needs Republicans to get congressional approval of the next tranche of funds sometime this spring.
He is expected to get that approval, in part because many lawmakers who don't approve of sending more combat troops are loath to cut off funds to soldiers in the field.
"I think that in general the American people, while obviously this is very difficult financially for us, will continue to support the troops that are there and the Congress will reflect that," Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin said this week.
But with Americans tiring of war and getting more concerned about U.S. indebtedness, political pressures are expected to grow for winding down U.S. military operations and their costs in Iraq and Afghanistan.
costof war.com estimates +950 Billion! What's 50 Billion among taxpayers?! http://costofwar.com/
What's a trillion dollars?
A trillion dollars = $1,000,000,000,000.
That's 12 zeroes to the left of the decimal point. A trillion is a million million dollars.
The U.S. government spends more than the entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Australia, China and Spain combined. If you laid one dollar bills end to end, you could make a chain that stretches from earth to the moon and back again 200 times before you ran out of dollar bills! One trillion dollars would stretch nearly from the earth to the sun. It would take a military jet flying at the speed of sound, reeling out a roll of dollar bills behind it, 14 years before it reeled out one trillion dollar bills.
What is frightening is that government will continue to grow in America unless citizens prevent it. If government stays on the course it's been on for the past forty years without a radical change, the federal government will have a $10 TRILLION BUDGET by the year 2010.
Foolish politicians make pronouncements about the strength of the economy. The total debt obligation of the United States now exceeds 46 TRILLION DOLLARS.
American workers now net almost 30 percent less in real wages than they did in 1973. After taxes, two paychecks in a family barely equal the purchasing power one had thirty years ago. Source:http://100777.com/node/455
A trillion dollars = $1,000,000,000,000.
That's 12 zeroes to the left of the decimal point. A trillion is a million million dollars.
The U.S. government spends more than the entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Australia, China and Spain combined. If you laid one dollar bills end to end, you could make a chain that stretches from earth to the moon and back again 200 times before you ran out of dollar bills! One trillion dollars would stretch nearly from the earth to the sun. It would take a military jet flying at the speed of sound, reeling out a roll of dollar bills behind it, 14 years before it reeled out one trillion dollar bills.
What is frightening is that government will continue to grow in America unless citizens prevent it. If government stays on the course it's been on for the past forty years without a radical change, the federal government will have a $10 TRILLION BUDGET by the year 2010.
Foolish politicians make pronouncements about the strength of the economy. The total debt obligation of the United States now exceeds 46 TRILLION DOLLARS.
American workers now net almost 30 percent less in real wages than they did in 1973. After taxes, two paychecks in a family barely equal the purchasing power one had thirty years ago. Source:http://100777.com/node/455
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Blackwater before drinking water
by Greg Palast for The Huffington Post
Blackwater before drinking water
by Greg Palast for The Huffington Post
Bless the President for having rescue teams in the air almost immediately. That was President Olafur Grimsson of Iceland. On Wednesday, the AP reported that the President of the United States promised, "The initial contingent of 2,000 Marines could be deployed to the quake-ravaged country within the next few days." "In a few days," Mr. Obama?
There's no such thing as a 'natural' disaster. 200,000 Haitians have been slaughtered by slum housing and IMF "austerity" plans.
A friend of mine called. Do I know a journalist who could get medicine to her father? And she added, trying to hold her voice together, "My sister, she's under the rubble. Is anyone going who can help, anyone?" Should I tell her, "Obama will have Marines there in 'a few days'"?
China deployed rescuers with sniffer dogs within 48 hours. China, Mr. President. China: 8,000 miles distant. Miami: 700 miles close. US bases in Puerto Rico: right there.
Obama's Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, "I don't know how this government could have responded faster or more comprehensively than it has." We know Gates doesn't know.
From my own work in the field, I know that FEMA has access to ready-to-go potable water, generators, mobile medical equipment and more for hurricane relief on the Gulf Coast. It's all still there. Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who served as the task force commander for emergency response after Hurricane Katrina, told the Christian Science Monitor, “I thought we had learned that from Katrina, take food and water and start evacuating people." Maybe we learned but, apparently, Gates and the Defense Department missed school that day.
Send in the Marines. That's America's response. That's what we're good at. The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson finally showed up after three days. With what? It was dramatically deployed — without any emergency relief supplies. It has sidewinder missiles and 19 helicopters.
But don't worry, the International Search and Rescue Team, fully equipped and self-sufficient for up to seven days in the field, deployed immediately with ten metric tons of tools and equipment, three tons of water, tents, advanced communication equipment and water purifying capability. They're from Iceland.
Gates wouldn't send in food and water because, he said, there was no "structure ... to provide security." For Gates, appointed by Bush and allowed to hang around by Obama, it's security first. That was his lesson from Hurricane Katrina. Blackwater before drinking water.
Previous US presidents have acted far more swiftly in getting troops on the ground on that island. Haiti is the right half of the island of Hispaniola. It's treated like the right testicle of Hell. The Dominican Republic the left. In 1965, when Dominicans demanded the return of Juan Bosch, their elected President, deposed by a junta, Lyndon Johnson reacted to this crisis rapidly, landing 45,000 US Marines on the beaches to prevent the return of the elected president.
How did Haiti end up so economically weakened, with infrastructure, from hospitals to water systems, busted or non-existent - there are two fire stations in the entire nation - and infrastructure so frail that the nation was simply waiting for "nature" to finish it off?
Don’t blame Mother Nature for all this death and destruction. That dishonor goes to Papa Doc and Baby Doc, the Duvalier dictatorship, which looted the nation for 28 years. Papa and his Baby put an estimated 80% of world aid into their own pockets - with the complicity of the US government happy to have the Duvaliers and their voodoo militia, Tonton Macoutes, as allies in the Cold War. (The war was easily won: the Duvaliers’ death squads murdered as many as 60,000 opponents of the regime.)
What Papa and Baby didn't run off with, the IMF finished off through its "austerity" plans. An austerity plan is a form of voodoo orchestrated by economists zomby-fied by an irrational belief that cutting government services will somehow help a nation prosper.
In 1991, five years after the murderous Baby fled, Haitians elected a priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who resisted the IMF's austerity diktats. Within months, the military, to the applause of Papa George HW Bush, deposed him.History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. The farce was George W. Bush. In 2004, after the priest Aristide was re-elected President, he was kidnapped and removed again, to the applause of Baby Bush.
Haiti was once a wealthy nation, the wealthiest in the hemisphere, worth more, wrote Voltaire in the 18th century, than that rocky, cold colony known as New England. Haiti's wealth was in black gold: slaves. But then the slaves rebelled - and have been paying for it ever since.
From 1825 to 1947, France forced Haiti to pay an annual fee to reimburse the profits lost by French slaveholders caused by their slaves’ successful uprising. Rather than enslave individual Haitians, France thought it more efficient to simply enslave the entire nation.
From 1825 to 1947, France forced Haiti to pay an annual fee to reimburse the profits lost by French slaveholders caused by their slaves’ successful uprising. Rather than enslave individual Haitians, France thought it more efficient to simply enslave the entire nation.
Secretary Gates tells us, "There are just some certain facts of life that affect how quickly you can do some of these things." The Navy's hospital boat will be there in, oh, a week or so. Heckuva job, Brownie!
Note just received from my friend. Her sister was found, dead; and her other sister had to bury her. Her father needs his anti-seizure medicines. That's a fact of life too, Mr. President.
Through our journalism network, we are trying to get my friend's medicines to her father. If any reader does have someone getting into or near Port-au-Prince, please contact Haiti@GregPalast.com immediately.
Urgently recommended reading - The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, the history of the successful slave uprising in Hispaniola by the brilliant CLR James.
Urgently recommended reading - The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, the history of the successful slave uprising in Hispaniola by the brilliant CLR James.
Frontline reports that after decades of legal maneuvering, lawyers acting on behalf of the people of Haiti have finally established a claim over a small part of the assets believed to have been stolen by the nation’s former president Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier. Between 1971 and 1986, Duvalier, his ex-wife Michelle Bennett Duvalier, and three people acting as agents are believed to have appropriated about $540M from the Haitian public treasury, most of it from relief money given to Haiti by international aid organizations and foreign governments. While extreme poverty strangled the island nation, with 90% of the population subsisting on less than $150 annually, the Duvaliers used the funds to finance a lavish life style that included a $1M yacht, a luxurious villa in France, and well-publicized shopping trips to Miami and New York.
Lawyers have recovered $6.5M frozen in one of Duvalier’s Swiss account, a small but symbolic amount that Pierre-Yves Morier, a lawyer at the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs in charge of asset return, calls “a victory in the fight against impunity and corruption.” “We need corrupt leaders to realize that they can’t get away with crimes,” says Marilyn Allien, Haiti’s representative for the anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International in Port-au-Prince. “The return of these illicit assets demonstrates that despite the time lapsed, dictators continue to be responsible for their crimes and cannot benefit from their stolen assets.”
The efforts to return the money to Haiti started in 1986, shortly after Duvalier fled the country, with a request from the new Haitian government to Switzerland for legal assistance to track down any money Duvalier had stolen from public funds and hidden in Switzerland. They located $6.5 million in a suspicious Swiss bank account of the Liechtenstein-based Brouilly foundation, set up by Duvalier’s mother through a Panamanian company. It proved difficult, however, to establish that the money didn’t rightfully belong to the Duvaliers and the investigation came to a halt in 2002. In May 2008, the new Haitian government supplied evidence of a criminal investigation against former president Duvalier and the funds were scheduled for release to the government. The release of the funds has been delayed by an appeal from the Duvalier family, but lawyers believe it is only a matter of months before the funds are in the government’s control. The $6.5 million is designated to go to social and humanitarian projects, most likely to a hospital or a water treatment facility. “Making sure that the money helps the poorest of the poor is very important to us,” says Allien of Transparency International. “We want to see direct effects on the living conditions of the people who suffered rather than having it go to infrastructure projects with uncertain benefits.”
For more on the asset recovery efforts go to http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/bribe/2009/05/haiti-the-long-road-to-recovery.html
Photo is from Vintage Nic’s photostream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/93759346@N00/3453140391/ [Shopping trip: Haitian first lady Michele Duvalier aka "Madame President" at New York with bodyguards. Spent a reported $1.7 million in classy shops of New York, Paris and London. ]
Lawyers have recovered $6.5M frozen in one of Duvalier’s Swiss account, a small but symbolic amount that Pierre-Yves Morier, a lawyer at the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs in charge of asset return, calls “a victory in the fight against impunity and corruption.” “We need corrupt leaders to realize that they can’t get away with crimes,” says Marilyn Allien, Haiti’s representative for the anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International in Port-au-Prince. “The return of these illicit assets demonstrates that despite the time lapsed, dictators continue to be responsible for their crimes and cannot benefit from their stolen assets.”
The efforts to return the money to Haiti started in 1986, shortly after Duvalier fled the country, with a request from the new Haitian government to Switzerland for legal assistance to track down any money Duvalier had stolen from public funds and hidden in Switzerland. They located $6.5 million in a suspicious Swiss bank account of the Liechtenstein-based Brouilly foundation, set up by Duvalier’s mother through a Panamanian company. It proved difficult, however, to establish that the money didn’t rightfully belong to the Duvaliers and the investigation came to a halt in 2002. In May 2008, the new Haitian government supplied evidence of a criminal investigation against former president Duvalier and the funds were scheduled for release to the government. The release of the funds has been delayed by an appeal from the Duvalier family, but lawyers believe it is only a matter of months before the funds are in the government’s control. The $6.5 million is designated to go to social and humanitarian projects, most likely to a hospital or a water treatment facility. “Making sure that the money helps the poorest of the poor is very important to us,” says Allien of Transparency International. “We want to see direct effects on the living conditions of the people who suffered rather than having it go to infrastructure projects with uncertain benefits.”
For more on the asset recovery efforts go to http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/bribe/2009/05/haiti-the-long-road-to-recovery.html
Photo is from Vintage Nic’s photostream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/93759346@N00/3453140391/ [Shopping trip: Haitian first lady Michele Duvalier aka "Madame President" at New York with bodyguards. Spent a reported $1.7 million in classy shops of New York, Paris and London. ]
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