friendsoflatinamerica

Haiti, Dominican Republic, Sugar, Fair Trade

For Information on the Fair Trade Sugar program see

http://www.transfairusa.org/content/certification/sugar_program.php

Global Exchange maintains a list of Fair trade retailers.
http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/fairtrade/coffee/retailers.html

For information on human rights issues related to sugar see

http://www.thepriceofsugar.com/index2.shtml

For related information See

Movement of Dominican - Haitian Women (MUDHA)

http://www.comminit.com/en/node/122335

Infant health in D.R.

http://infantesano.org/index.html

Recommended Reading

- Quitting America" by Randall Robinson, who is a personal friend of Jean Bertrand Aristide

- On Cuba:, "THE CRIME OF CUBA" by Carleton Beals, masterfully written in 1933 at the end of the brutally bloody dictatorship of Gerardo Machado with photos by Walker Evans.  The book has been out of print for many years, but it could be found on E-Bay.  It also covers the political & economic penetration of the U.S.A., that was the direct reason for the radical revolution led by Fidel and Che, that triumphed on 12-31-58.  Another very complete volume that I recommend  is "CUBA  A  REVOLUTION IN MOTION" , 2004, by Isaac Saney, a Canadian, on the faculty at Dalhousie University in Halifax.

Ecuador's New Canadian Ambassador Helped Plan Haiti Coup

Ecuador's New Canadian Ambassador Helped Plan Haiti Coup
By Anthony Fenton,
Tue Dec 6th, 2005
The Narcospere

With little fanfare only three days before the minority Liberal government of Paul Martin fell by way of a non-confidence vote in Ottawa's House of Commons (on November 28th), beleaguered Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew appointed Christian Lapointe as Canada's next Ambassador to Ecuador. Lapointe has been serving as Director of the Caribbean and Central America and Andean Region Division within the Department of Foreign Affairs. This move could spell trouble for Ecuador as Canada is in the midst of profound changes in foreign policy that find new support for destabilization under the cover of support for "democracy promotion."

*Wherever There Is Impunity for Power,

Statement of Ramsey Clark at the Oct. 11 press conference of the
International Tribunal on Haiti’s Commission of Inquiry in Port-au-Prince./

I first came to Haiti in 1946, before probably anybody else in this room was born. Over the years, I’ve been back maybe a dozen times, but because of the nature of my work, never at a happy time.

You have heard descriptions of terrible police and military violence against the people of Haiti. All who revere life and seek peace have to recognize that police and military violence against the people is the greatest of all crimes. Who will protect the people when the police and military are violating their rights?

UN in Haiti Part of the problem, not the solution

Haiti Information Project; ZNet; September 9, 2005

 

Aug. 30, Port-au-Prince, Haiti When doing a news search of Haiti today, you will find two very different articles about soccer in Haiti.

An Associated Press dispatch headlined "Soldiers use soccer to win over Haitians" by Alfred de Montesquiou tells how U.N.-deployed Brazilian troops are playing soccer with residents in Bel Air to counteract fierce popular resistance to the Feb. 29, 2004 coup against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the ensuing foreign military occupation of Haiti.

Another article entitled "Massacre of football fans raises state terror fears," written by independent journalist Reed Lindsay, tells how a machete-wielding paramilitary death-squad and Haitian National Police (PNH), under the nose of U.N. forces, attacked spectators on Aug. 20 at a soccer match sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), killing at least eight. The discrepancy between these two news accounts goes to the very heart of the question: what is the U.N.'s role in Haiti?