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 first coup against Haiti's democratically elected government, in September 1991, was condemned even by the George H.W. Bush Administration. This although the CIA had funded the leaders of the coup and--according to a founder of the death squads that murdered thousands of people during the 1991-94 military dictatorship--also sponsored the repression. All this was covert, and the official position of the United States and most other countries was that the dictatorship was not legitimate.

But when in February 2004 Haiti's democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was overthrown for the second time by remnants of that prior dictatorship--including convicted mass murderers and former death squad leaders--this was considered a legitimate "regime change." The Caricom countries, showing great courage, objected strenuously, as did some members of the US Congress. But these voices were not powerful enough to influence the course of events.

The fix was in: 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--however small in numbers--and to make Haiti under Aristide ungovernable. The whole scenario was strikingly similar to the series of events that led to the coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in April 2002. The same US organizations were involved, and the opposition--as in Venezuela--controlled and used the major media as a tool for destabilization. And in both cases the coup leaders, joined by Washington, announced to the world that the elected president had "voluntarily resigned"--which later turned out to be false.

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