correction: url for “declining nuke forensic capabilities”, above.
Nuclear Forensics Skill Is Declining in U.S., Report Says

Posted by: flickervertigo | Jan 17 2011 19:10 utc | 3

Well it wouldn’t be surprising to see that creep back in the palace at Port au Prince. As far as Oblamblam and the imperialists go, the biggest mistake Reagan made was pushing the Duvaliers outta Haiti.
Everything ran smoothly no loud-mouthed ex-priests insinuating that the huge tax Haiti pays the bankers to stay free is getting a bit old after 200 years, the least expensive hookers in the Western Hemisphere, pesky foreign journos and agitators given short shrift by the Tonton Macoutes; what’s not to like?
Hand Haiti back to the Duvaliers and then they can concentrate on the new domino . Tunisia’s forlorn attempt at freedom
(as predicted the new government is, apart from a couple of token appointments to ‘opposition figures -most likely informants or double agents anyhow, almost entirely comprised of elements of the ‘old government’. This hasn’t been ignored by the protestors who are being just as vocal in the demonstrations post Ben Ali as they were pre Ben Ali’s flight into exile. The only thing is now the police have begun shooting protesters again after apparently refusing to continue their assault on the population in the last days of Ben Ali, once again they no longer seem to care who they kill. Western media is passing this off as fair play on some peeps who will never be satisfied. “They got a new govt what more do they want?”)
So the policy of only regulating the American hemisphere’s drug trade is seemingly an aim of Oblamblam as much as it was Dubya’s and amerika is concentrating on asserting 100% hegemony over Africa & the ME. If Egypt, Algeria, Jordan or Libya were to fall into the wrong hands, the plans would go awry. Three are oil producers, the other two are major players in buttressing the invasion beach head in Palestine.
There isn’t that much chance of it happening (unless amerika interferes but that is another story), for a range of divers reasons but for the greedies bidding for a piece of pentagon pie North Africa is likely to be ‘the new big thing’ so facts won’t be allowed to get in the way of a good story. Meaning Haiti is needed to shut the fuck up; administration officials will be asking themselves why it is Haitians cannot accept their lives of poverty and despair “after all it has been that way for a couple of centuries”. Ever since the french banks came up with the scam of ‘lending’ Haitian slaves the money to buy their freedom from the banks doing the lending, Haiti has been in debt and the nation has been impoverished. A good deal of the debt has been passed to amerikan banks. A smart move because it means Haiti will never be let off the hook. Well, as long as amerika is chief stand over man anyhow.
I was unfortunate enough to have watched a bit of Tim Geithner’s “speech to the gnomes about China” on VoA last week. In it he maintained that BRIC, Brazil, Russia India China are gonna be fine, amerika will bounce back, but ‘old’ Europe and Japan are gonna suffer a drop in living standards.
Hmm I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see Geithner fuck that up as he has fucked up everything else he has tried to achieve. One thing is for sure though, if amerika does want to ‘recover’ at europe’s expense and gain complete control of all the bits of Africa China doesn’t want, the old colonial powers, in particular england & france are gonna be pushed out fast.
I’m betting that the Tunisia mess and the alleged dominos following it are gonna be used as the excuse to push france back north. This appears to be reflected in Sarkozy & co’s attitude towards Ben Ali. As late as Wednesday last week the french minister of the interior was offering Ben Ali french riot police to ‘sort out the terrorists and troublemakers’. By Saturday after refusing french airspace to Ben Ali’s private jet, the french sent the secret police to euro disney where obscure elements of Ben Ali’s extended family had holed up. They told them to gather their stuff and to piss off to Saudi with the rest of Ben Ali’s mob.
france is in the classic cleft stick. be seen to be ‘too close’ to the North African despots it put in place a lifetime ago, and amerika will call them ‘assistants to the oppressor’ or some such and raise a hue & cry to push france out. If they don’t help shore up the oppression, the people will surely rise up against the despots and amerika will claim they are too incompetent to run North Africa & raise a hue & cry to push france out.
That’s the plan – under normal circumstances you’d back france to finesse thru this but Sarkozy may not be competent enough to carry off the dance steps required.
We can only hope the sides get lost in the minutiae and the North Africans get free from both sets of criminals.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 17 2011 20:19 utc | 5

One dictator flees, while another returns. Interesting.

Posted by: Maracatu | Jan 17 2011 21:58 utc | 7

i got to think that there’s something going on that we’re not supposed to notice,
that’s why the non-issues of tunisia and haiti have come up.

Posted by: flickervertigo | Jan 17 2011 22:07 utc | 9

@ Agent 99 is that site like the modern Hollywood A lister’s face book page? Right here has a zillion photos of Sean Penn reveiving assorted awards for his “selfless dedication” to Haiti “even after the cameras have gone” lol which doesn’t explain how they got the shots. The only other picture on jphro’s “news page” is the obligatory cute Haitian child. Don’t show photos of grown ups cause big black people still scare the shit outta white liberals.
Anway I guess I was thinking “there’s worse ways for an old drunk to fill up his day than be coming over all ‘magic whitey’ about Haiti then I saw the pic at the bottom whose caption reads:
“Sean Penn receives the “Hollywood Humanitarian Award” at the Hollywood Awards. . .. . .The award was presented by Lieutenant General “Ken” Keen.”
The photo shows Penn shaking hands with an average middle aged bossfella murderer, and I thought fuck that that’s not helping that is consorting with the enemy. Giving credibility to the assholes responsible for causing the mess Haiti is in.”
Penn can’t play it both ways, no matter how many shacks he pays for. Giving the amerikan empire a free pass guarantees there will be many more Haitis. Same as the excreable bono creep when you get right down to it. time to be ashamed to be irish – again.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 17 2011 22:15 utc | 11

there’s got to be a use for the type of mind you have, debs…
i cant think of what it would be, though, if lives depended on it.
unless they’re israeli lives, who are depending on debate tactics described by hitler in “mein kampf”.
you got to wonder about people who confirm hitler’s descriptions of jewish debate tactics, dont you?

Posted by: flickervertigo | Jan 17 2011 22:27 utc | 13

Many bible-thumping blacks from my neck of the woods, the same folks who view, and continue to view, Obama as their own personal Messiah, are of the belief that all of the natural disasters that’ve taken place in Haiti is God’s way of punishing the Haitians for engaging in voodoo and other forms of witchcraft. They believe that if Haitians had simply stuck to the Word of God, God would’ve awarded them with a basket full of earthy delights.
So if you think that only white bigots have been sucked into the Religious Right’s propaganda machine, think again. This is one reason, among many, why I still believe that God is nothing more than a figment of our imagination.

Posted by: Cynthia | Jan 17 2011 23:41 utc | 15

@ 5 the situation is fluid in Tunisia, who knows what the next few weeks and months will bring to its people, but much like in the west African country of Ivory Coast the French imperial tentacles (for what it is) is now out in the open.
France and the Ivory Coast
@ 9/10 you must be joking? You may need to go back and read Debs post again to get the nuggets and if you don’t appreciate the post then stfu and do not be rude.

Posted by: Minerva | Jan 18 2011 2:28 utc | 17

@99 fair enough each to their own. It just seems to me if Obama can keep aristide out of Haiti, surely he can keep the Duvalier mob out.
As for Sean Pean well I have/had no issue with him being in Haiti (other than the numbers of visitors there is causing a major strain on accomodation rents have shot up for those few habitable domiciles) My reference to his drinking was in relation to the fact that we all have our ways of keeping personal demons at bay and if Sean Penn wants to be a magic whiteman in country full of impoverished unwhite people who of course have been made poor by other whitefellas then, there’s ok cause there are much worse ways of behaving.
His act does some good and didn’t appear to be doing too much harm until I saw the photo of him shaking hands with an amerikan general. That is harmful and by being friends with the mob whose actions are the biggest direct cause of harm to humans in Haiti and many other parts of the world, he has more than negated any good he did in Haiti.
He is contributing to the meme that the amerikan military is a force for good when it is by far the most evil, polluting and out of control entity currently in existence on planet earth. I dunno the exact figures but combine the sanctions from amerikan armed blockades, the support of puppet tyrants and the direct killing of humans and it would be within reason to assume that the amerikan military is responsible for a million deaths of humans a year, year in year out. No one/nothing else comes close to that, and Penn’s happy handshake was a piece of media manipulation designed to have Penn seeming to legitimise those evil thugs.
Penn isn’t that naive, he knew that but either he doesn’t fully understand what he is doing or he is happy to self aggrandise even if that is the trade off. Lile I said, just the same as the excreable bono.
Take out the support for murderers and he is probably ‘not a bad bloke’ But I can’t do that any more. I believe if we really want to change things we have to be unequivocal in our opposition to murderers. That is precisely why the empire’s media manipulators have made such a big deal over ‘support for the troops’.
The sooner the murderers at the bottom, those soldiers who decided they would rather kill for empire than compromise their access to the amerikan lifestyle, discover that humanity holds them in contempt for such an inhumane cop-out, the sooner they will stop killing to order.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 18 2011 3:11 utc | 19

I think Duvalier being back in Haiti is an outrage. Papa and Baby Doc stayed in power using state terror and they used the country like a cow and practically milked it to death. There is no justice because Aristide is still banned, while the despot gets to come back. And the banning of Aristide’s party is a crime against democracy in Haiti.

Posted by: Copeland | Jan 18 2011 3:50 utc | 21

Copeland, I agree completely and the outrageousness of it is surely why b has called it to our attention.
From the very beginning of the earthquake the US acted strangely, not as if it was interested in helping these devastated people out – e.g. we didn’t allow the French to fly their inflatable hospital to Port au Prince, instead forcing them to drive it in much later from the Dominican Republic.
We might be preparing to do some disaster capitalism with the help of Baby Doc… after having got rid of Aristide.
I love the story an Episcopal missionary told decades ago about how the Haitians were terribly poor but their spirits were very alive and sustaining for each other. A common respectful saying was ‘Every head is a world’. The memory of this gentle acceptance has enriched my life quite often. What a welcome and important gift!

Posted by: lambent1 | Jan 18 2011 4:35 utc | 23

Beyond the pale an outrage, yes, yes indeedy.
And, also, yes, Penn was referring to the 82nd Airborne’s mission in Haiti, not to the imperialist wars.

Posted by: 99 | Jan 18 2011 5:59 utc | 25

Flicker…
If you can see past his emotional bent, DiD does post some interesting stuff, really. I don’t agree with much I read here, and I have a hard time with some of the various attitudes worn into the bar. But it is definitely a matter of perspective. I’m also ‘inside the beast’ so sometimes I feel the effects of the broad brush. My wife is from Jakarta, and has seen the direct effects of my consumption of affordable clothing…her compatriots having to work for pennies-per-shoe-stitched and the like. This has caused me to be more sensitive and read between the lines when a bloke from another country speaks harshly.
Anyway, have patience, step over the plies of BS on the floor, and step up to the bar for a drink. If people can tolerate my dumb arse hanging around here, they’re obviously willing to tolerate a wide spectrum of opinions.
Cheers!!!

Posted by: Dr. Wellington Yueh | Jan 18 2011 6:54 utc | 27

“…the summer night is fragrant with a mighty expectation of relief…”

we are what we are, and the sooner we understand what we are…
let me know if you think i need to get drunker.

Posted by: flickervertigo | Jan 18 2011 7:40 utc | 29

I find it odd that we need to discuss the meanderings of ANY Hollywood hothead… Who really gives a damn what any of them say? Oh, I know, some make what are deemed “important” movies that supposedly deal with ‘issues’… give me a break. They’re entertainers owned lock, stock and barrel by the monied elite who run that godforsaken pissant place where ‘dreams are made’. Vomit!
Gushing on about a how malaria ruined a poor soldiers life because the military wasn’t able to provide anti malarial drugs? Come-on, all those poor fucks are inspected, injected and otherwise prodded and probed long before they end up on foreign soil… I’m speculating, but I’d imagine that poor troop was just unlucky. Sucks to be him or her, but to use that as an example of how ‘selfless’ the troops are… shit.
flickervertigo, I’m not sure what you’re yammering on about? What ‘america’ are you defending? The illusion we’ve been selling to ourselves? Or the illusion we’re selling the world? I live here in the good ol’ usa, and honestly, it ain’t all it’s cracked-up to be. At least not from the chair I’m sitting in. But then I stopped buying the PTB’s crap a long time ago… I can’t think of a national government I’d trust as far as I could throw the Titanic (at it’s current place deep on the ocean’s floor) so I suppose I’m just hard to please.
The only troops I give full marks to, in today’s world, are the ones living in Canada or in prison because they refuse to fight. What is more heroic? Using a weapon against other poor muthafuckers? Or using yourself as a political statement?
Haiti is hated by empire because it’s history shatters the illusion of the dumb niger… and is pretty much the sole reason the PTB give it any mind at all (well, that, and maybe some of the hemisphere’s largest oil reserves? ). I think if we’re going to be discussing Haiti, maybe we should ask ourselves why we have such a massive embassy there?
I don’t know, maybe it makes sense to have a huge compound? At the very least it can house the egos of the never ending stream of do-gooder hollywood types who need to feel they’ve earned their ‘money for nothing’ and so spend a little face time with the poor lil’ black Haitian children. All ya’ need to know about a guy like Penn is what he does with the money he ‘earns’… Ahhh, I see in the gossip columns that he recently had to give ex-wife, Robin Wright, half of $120 million… that still leaves a bit for, um, humanitarian work. Well, after reading that, i guess he ain’t all bad.

Posted by: DaveS | Jan 18 2011 12:21 utc | 31

dave…
the US is the most dangerous, most destructive man-made thing on the planet… especially so, now that its foreign policy is dominated by a terminally desperate state that expects jews to abandon their morals to defend that state.
When Survival of the Jewish People Is at Stake, There’s No Place for Morals, from the jewish forward.
dror equates “survival of the jewish people” with survival of the state of israel… nevermind that jews existed for thousands of years before israel existed.
and, once you’ve abandoned your morals, what does that imply about 9/11, the “war on terror” and incessant israeli and israeli american attempts to lie us into more wars? …what will the israelis and their neocon buddies to for an encore?
you zionist guys realize that america is turning into a shit sandwich, but you’re reduced to impotent whining about how bad america is, and you cant be more specific because you know that zionist influence is to blame for lots of america’s problems.
in light of the growing certainty that we’ve arrived at peak oil production, does that explain some of israel’s desperation? …does israel have to complete the ethnic cleansing project in the high ground of the west bank and subdue its neighbors before its american protector goes tits up?
the max estimated oil in haiti, estimated in the article you cited, is about a billion barrels, which would last the US for about 50 days, and would last the world for 11 or 12 days.
we, in the US, are buying oil anyhow, and if anything, our misadventures overseas are driving the price of oil up… and on top of that, we have to pay trillions extra for the wars… does that make any sense to anyone but a zionist?
what if we cut military spending, brought everyone home, and used some of that war money to transition to alternative energy? …but we cant do that, can we, because the israelis and their fellow travelers wont stand for it.
but keep on whining, for all the good it will do.
it’s very likely that the boomers will figure out that they’re expected to give up their social security and medicare to pay for the defense of israel… or maybe provide more trillions of dollars of loot to the big money guys who understand the implications of peak oil.

Posted by: flickervertigo | Jan 18 2011 17:08 utc | 33

Jeff Wells discovered a profile of Wheeler by Chris Hedges in the NYT, from 2002:
PUBLIC LIVES; Warning the Public to Get Its Dukes Up

JOHN WHEELER, after graduating from West Point in 1966, was assigned to a missile crew for a year in Franklin Lakes, N.J. The missiles, which had the capacity to carry nuclear tips, were to be fired over New York City in the event of an attack by Soviet-bloc bombers. In training drills, the crew tracked B-52’s zeroing in on the Empire State Building.
Mr. Wheeler soon realized that if there were a real strike, he would have to detonate the missiles above the city.
”I knew what a nuclear detonation, an air burst, would do over the center of Manhattan,” he said. ”I knew what would happen to all the little kids who looked up in the sky over the blast zone. And now the circle closes. I am again back in New York facing the possibility of another nuclear strike.”
The year in Franklin Lakes was the beginning of his disillusionment with authority, which was magnified by service in Vietnam. His West Point class lost more members killed and wounded there than any other, he said.
”I was a witness in Vietnam,” he said. ”I spent half my time in a helicopter traveling around the country. I was a witness to the decimation of my West Point class. And I knew we were decimated for a lie.”
When he left the Army as a captain in 1971, he read theology for a year at Virginia Theological Seminary. He graduated from Yale Law School and then plunged into the life of a grass-roots organizer, and one with highly effective credentials, including the M.B.A. he picked up at Harvard before he went to Vietnam.
”When I left law school the full impact of the lies hit me,” he said. ”I have been thinking about these lies, meditating on them and acting on them ever since. The honor system at West Point failed grotesquely within the chain of command. The most senior officers went along with McNamara and Johnson and were guilty. It was an abomination.”
He turned from a figure who was a pillar of the establishment — his father, whose West Point ring he wears, fought from Normandy to the Nazi death camps — to become the driving force behind the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. He helped to make Mothers Against Drunk Driving into a powerful lobbying organization. And now, living with his wife, Katherine Klyce, in a two-story apartment that looks out on Lower Manhattan, he is taking time from his work expanding the Mercy Ships charitable hospital fleet to undertake a new cause.
Mr. Wheeler, 57, a compact man who radiates energy, is beginning a campaign this week to encourage private citizens to take a strong role in preparedness for a possible nuclear or biological terrorist strike. He plans to open a Web site, preparednessfornuclearterrorism.org, this week. He believes that the United States may be hit, he said, partly because of his own work on nuclear and biological programs, and partly because he does not trust the government to tell us all we need to know.

The domain expired Aug 25, 2005
preparednessfornuclearterrorism.org

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 18 2011 18:12 utc | 35

We hate it when our friends become successful. – Morrissey

Posted by: Biklett | Jan 18 2011 18:54 utc | 37

I too have been wondering about why Duvalier why now in Haiti. I did come across this:
Former Haitian Dictator “Baby Doc” Duvalier Carted Away By Police After Surprise Return to Haiti

After intense questioning lasting well over an hour by the nation’s chief prosecutor and a judge, Duvalier was escorted by police out of the luxury hotel where he had been holed up since he returned late Sunday.
…
“He is being taken to the prosecutors’ office to notify him of the file against him,” the head of the Port-au-Prince bar association, Gervais Charles, told AFP.
In a sign of further political turmoil for the beleaguered nation, groups of Duvalier supporters gathered outside the Hotel Karibe, calling for current President Rene Preval to be arrested instead.
“The revolution is beginning, arrest Preval,” they chanted, as witnesses reported the roads heading to the court building were swiftly being blocked with rocks and trash containers.
One protester, Gerant Jones, 30, told AFP: “Young people know there was a dictatorship but he did a lot for Haiti… It’s different today. He has to stay. Haiti needs him.”
Although he was not handcuffed, Duvalier was led away in a convoy of armored vehicles bristling with swat police.
It was not clear what charges would be laid against Duvalier, who fled the country on a US Air Force plane in 1986 after a popular uprising, having allegedly siphoned away millions of dollars from the impoverished Caribbean country.
…
In 2007, Duvalier called on Haitians to forgive him for the “mistakes” committed during his reign, but Preval dismissed his remarks at the time and said the former dictator should face justice.
…
Duvalier’s sudden reappearance is likely to initially deepen the political crisis, although it remained unclear whether he intended to try play any political role in the country’s future.

Posted by: xcroc | Jan 18 2011 21:50 utc | 39

I just came upon this interview with Martin Luther King Jnr. on The Mike Douglas TV show in 1967..his words still resonate to this day…
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27280.htm

Posted by: noiseannoys | Jan 18 2011 23:26 utc | 41

@noise annoys Yeah well let’s hope so. The other faint chance is that Duvalier is running outta cash & decided he needs to come back to Haiti, let them charge him and then beat the charges because files are in such disarray after 25 years. Then he would have a reasonable chance of wresting the $6.2 mill outta the Swiss. No matter how strong their new law is, it is difficult to see how the Swiss could keep the dough away from Duvalier if he had been acquitted of all charges in Haiti.
Otherwise all sorts of peeps who have ‘parked’ money in Switzerland would hafta to consider moving it. Just on that what odds do you reckon the Swiss would have hung on to the money since 1986, if Duvalier was a whitefella? The grounds are pretty thin without some sort of conviction and somehow I doubt that an all-encompassing law designed to separate former dictators from their ill-gotten gains would have a heap of support back at imperial HQ.
How else they gonna get puppets up? These blokes are generally pretty evil, but stupidity isn’t one of their vices, so any pragmatic sort of a tyrant would have to consider that his/her reign is likely to end before they die -precisely why they channel funds ‘offshore’. A law which practically guarantees they can’t hang on to it wouldn’t encourage the ‘better’ applicants for puppet despot now would it?
Of course Switzerland has been ‘old’ for parking dodgy coin for quite a while, and the discerning people have even moved past the Caymans (where Assange & Co are in the process of embarrassing the Brits into pulling the plug) and onto a spot just a spit from my back door .
Of course there is no ‘perfect’ jurisdiction, well not one that is known outside of a small circle of crooked billionaires anyway. The Cook Islands has been favoured by despots and amerikan organised crime alike, because unlike Panama which actively campaigns for crooked bank deposits by sledging the Cook Islands, the Rarotonga government is largely free of pressure points that the amerikan empire can access directly.
The Cook Islands government is a sovereign state when banking laws are considered but it has always ‘contracted out’ the foreign affairs bizzo like relationships with entities outside the Pacific, to New Zealand. Bank inaccessibility was further buttressed by amerika’s withdrawal from the Pacific back in the 90’s, and although that situation has changed with the establishment of the “Pacific USAID hub” opened by Hilary on November 2010, the location of that hub in Fiji will have turned off the Polynesian South Pacific for reasons too complicated to detail here.
If you are a pet dictator bowing and scraping to every imperial demand, the last thing you want is for amerika to be able to get control over your stash, because then there truly is no way out.
But Baby Doc has been outta the game for far too long to be able to play any of these games. Plus the average Haitian roading contractor probably has a bigger stash than Duvalier’s half a dozen mill, which surprise, surprise doesn’t appear to have appreciated much since the Swisso pols got their grasping paws on it.
It may well be that his best chance has been determined to be one last roll of the dice to grab his stash.
The groups of protesters will keep everyone especially the empire completely wrong footed if he plays it right by pretending to be aiming for the prez gig. He cuts a deal of no further attempts at going for his old job on condition the charges are dropped. This isn’t something that would fly if Haiti had anything approaching an elected govt close to the levers of power. In the current mess with everyone Haitian jockeying and amerika determined to keep Aristide away without seeming too blatant about it, it is conceivable that Duvalier’s distraction will be seen as one issue too many, and they will allow a situation where Duvalier gets his dosh and the Haitian courts are blamed for it.
Sure the Swiss pols will be a little embarrassed but they can point the finger at Haiti and allege that this was all the work of corrupt blackfellas. I don’t want to offend the Swiss who spend time at MoA & whom I know to be far from racist, but many Swiss do not share that point of view, just like many other European nations whose once- hidden bigotry has become plain in the last few years; Swiss conservatives are much less reticent about loosing negative generalisations on the character of unwhite societies, than they were a while ago.
Duvalier doesn’t appear to suffer from senile dementia, so he must recognise that his becoming the recipient of the alleged largesse bestowed upon Haiti would be a dead rat that amerikan pols and their compliant NGO’s, just could not swallow.
Therefore he has something else in play. May be it isn’t as obvious as getting his cache back, maybe he needs to be there in person to sell some land or houses, or dig up a treasure chest, but there would be ways to guarantee the loyalty of a proxy in those circumstances, so imo it is about the swiss money.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 19 2011 2:25 utc | 43

thanks for the der spiegel link hannah
@flicker: don’t be an ass. it’s one thing to have disagreements with a person’s arguments, but quite another to make it personal, especially if all you’re basing your opinion on is online finger-ranting.
i just scroll thru most of his spamming lizard, he’s a newbie interested in dethroning an ol regular. reeks of operative. heck i don’t agree w/all of debs rantings but he’s debs, genuine.

Posted by: annie | Jan 19 2011 16:37 utc | 45

@ Debs 43.
The new Swiss law concerning the stashes of those who have fallen into disfavor is quite weak, that is keeping the cash and then returning it to ‘the people’. (E.g. Duvalier.)
It was voted in by Parliament and has a retroactive punch.
The Federal Tribunal (Supreme Court) won’t know really what to do, when it goes to appeal, which it will.
In recent years, they have several times overturned crucial and ‘right’ (that is, considered as logical and sensible by a majority, etc.) decisions not only from lower courts, which is legitimate, but have overridden Parliamentary votes / decisions. The Constitution, dontcha know, and International treaties, signed, ratified, sealed.
The one glaring exception was the breaking of banking secrecy by UBS, the FINMA (Swiss bank regulatory authority) and the Federal Council (Gvmt.) when these together in cahoots communicated the identities/accounts of US supposed tax cheats to the US IRS, and ‘negotiated‘ with the US outside of Swiss law. The Federal Court found itself facing a ‘fait accompli.‘ (Long story and maybe this summary is not the best.)
Duvalier’s money is still here in CH because in 1985 it was considered ‘safe’ and subsequently he (family, etc.) could do nothing.
Racism is not an issue in this story. The crux concerns globalization, money, money, money, competition in the financial industry, international law, and jockeying between the various powers.
I can’t imagine that Duvalier would see returning to Haiti as part of a strategy to ‘get his money back‘ (see the interview I linked to), but who knows. People have dreams and wacky strategies, fool themselves, go for broke. And having US backing is a very powerful incentive.

Posted by: Noirette | Jan 19 2011 18:00 utc | 47

haiti liberté: A Class Analysis of Baby Doc: Mothballed Playboy Dictator Recalled to Service

The big question Haitians are asking is: who is behind Jean- Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier’s surprise arrival in Haiti with an expired Haitian passport on Jan. 16 aboard an Air France flight from Paris? “I have come here to see how I can help my country,” he announced, stepping off the plane. Yeah, right. It is inconceivable that Baby Doc, 59, would return to the country where there are outstanding criminal proceedings against him without knowing that some powerful foreigners have his back.
…
Time Magazine reports that “sources close to Duvalier told reporters Sunday that he’d entered Haiti on a diplomatic passport.” It is almost certain that any such passport (which has now mysteriously disappeared) would have had to come from either the U.S. or France, the two nations which helped prop up his regime with economic and military aid. The U.S. also flew Duvalier out of Haiti on Feb. 7, 1986 on a C-130 loaded with his sports cars and motorcycles and his wife’s furs, while France has hosted his golden exile and protected him from prosecution ever since.
…
over the past 16 years, [Préval] has compromised repeatedly with the U.S. empire he once vowed to fi ght, bowing to their demands that Haiti privatize its state enterprises, lower its tariff walls, and allow U.S. military aircraft and vessels to enter Haitian airspace and waters any time they please. Préval has gradually been turned into a Washington’s patsy, often happily but sometimes grudgingly, doing its bidding. Until now. Washington and Préval are presently at loggerheads over the disastrous Nov. 28 elections, which Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council claims should go to a second round between neo-Duvalierist former First Lady Mirlande Manigat, who supposedly came in fi rst, and Jude Célestin, the candidate of Préval’s party Unity.
But the Organization of American States (OAS), acting on Washington’s behalf, has issued a report that orders Préval to change the second-place candidate to neo- Duvalierist former konpa musician Michel “Sweet Mickey” Martelly. “There is nothing to negotiate in the [OAS] report,” said US ambassador to Haiti Kenneth Merten. But Préval is resisting. And this is where Duvalier, his old nemesis, comes in.
Manigat and Martelly are essentially the old and young faces of resurgent Duvalierism, of which Baby Doc is the living symbol. Célestin is not that much different; he was, after all, escorted to enlist as candidate by Rony Gilot, an infamous Duvalierist crony who is today escorting Baby Doc around Haiti. But Célestin is suspect because “sources in the American government know that Préval recently sought $25 million from [Venezuelan president Hugo] Chávez to bankroll [Célestin’s] runoff campaign,” complained Roger Noriega, who as President George W. Bush’s Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, was an architect of the 2004 coup against Aristide. Also among the former dictator’s escorts is Jodel Chamblain, the former No. 2 of the deathsquad FRAPH during the first coup against Aristide and a leader of the “rebels” who terrorized Northern and Central Haiti during the second coup against Aristide.
So we have come full circle. For the first time in 20 years, the bourgeois-grandon alliance, along with the U.S. and France, have a chance to install one of their preferred puppets through an election, however patently bogus, rather than a coup. This is likely why Duvalier is now in Haiti.

Posted by: b real | Jan 19 2011 19:32 utc | 49

could be we’re on the way to solving the mystery of wikileaks failure to publish state department cables that were critical of israel.
it’s beginning to look like there arent any… which will lead to speculation that, if you’re gonna keep your job with the state department, you gotta toe the party line.
Does anyone believe that those nine cables Counterpunch were given are all the relevant cables on Gaza in the whole stash of some 5000 Israel cables in the wikileaks collection?
Counterpunch gets played here or plays – you decide

Posted by: b | Jan 19 2011 19:48 utc | 51

remember dror, the guy who said in the jewish forward that all jews should abandon their morals in defense of israel?
well, he’s the founding president of JPPPI… you’re most likely aware of that.
the chairman of JPPPI was dennis ross, now obama’s special ambassador to the middle east… it’s likely ross and clinton have enough juice to impose self-censorship on their state department employees.
and, in a weird coincidence… remember leonid nevzlin, that yukos guys who russian courts convicted of “surprising” five business rivals in absentia, after nevzlin fled to israel?
well, nevzlin is now vice-chairman of JPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPI.
pattern recognition

Posted by: flickervertigo | Jan 19 2011 20:24 utc | 53

my first thoughts when I saw baby doc show up in Haiti was that he had come back because haiti apparently needs a strong leader. we all know how much the US appreciates strong leaders.
the fact that he was taken in to court to be charged is good theater. the judges and lawyers can make people believe they are doing their jobs. later, statutes of limitations and unreliable witnesses will cause those same judges to shake their heads and acquit.
how else can this end? what US friendly dictator has ever been punished by the people he raped?
I wonder what Michelle thinks of her husband when she sees this go down. one thing is to sell out dumb honkies, but assist the man to put down the former slaves? I do hope that eats him up inside….he really deserves many sleepless nights.

Posted by: dan of steele | Jan 19 2011 22:01 utc | 55

cynthia 48, that’s perfect!
Does anyone believe that those nine cables Counterpunch were given are all the relevant cables on Gaza in the whole stash of some 5000 Israel cables in the wikileaks collection?
i didn’t even bother reading the article b. why would there be anything interesting about the gaza slaughter coming out of the embassy?
here’s an article from 97 jweekly Jews now flocking to foreign-service careers in U.S.

In addition, Jewish career foreign-service officers and political appointees hold the post of current or immediate past ambassadors to Switzerland, Brazil, Nepal, Romania, Spain, Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, Morocco and Malaysia.
Gone are the days when so-called Arabists determined U.S. policy in the Middle East.
A new term, “Jewish Arabists,” has cropped up in right-wing circles to describe their view of the Jews who lead the Middle East peace process team.
Many credit the Indyk-Ross peace team with silencing charges that Jews cannot serve U.S. interests when conflicts arise with Israel.
Ironically, Arabs are now complaining of a Jewish bias. After a rough patch in the peace process, the Palestinian justice minister accused the United States of a “Zionist conspiracy.”
Eizenstat vehemently refutes the charge.
“The peace process is not being made by Jews; it’s being made by Americans,” Eizenstat said in a recent interview. “Any suggestion of bias is totally inappropriate and inaccurate.“

and that was before bush/cheney. the arabists have been driven out of the state department just as chas freeman was driven out of nie. it is inconceivable to me our embassy in israel is not stuffed w/neocons, i’m sure they just repeat the mfa hasbara. why wouldn’t they? check out the list of names in that jweekly article. i just read martin indyk was the new fresh face taking a look at the peace process (and hadley as i recall). and ross f course . wtf. the last place i expect interesting news from israel would be the embassy. these people might as well work for israel. they probably do for all we know.

Posted by: annie | Jan 20 2011 1:09 utc | 57

Samsung Granted RoboCop Patent
Coming to a location near you!
(Well, at least it may fire a warning shot first.)

Posted by: Rick Happ | Jan 20 2011 4:43 utc | 59

The most ingenuous sentence from flicker‘s link in 60:

It is not, then, some mythical enemy that these documents were classified to keep in the dark, but the American public itself, which would never accept these despicable policies were they aware of them.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Jan 20 2011 11:40 utc | 61

jdmckay, for up to date i/p info i rec mondoweiss. here’s their jan 5th coverage: Collective punishment: Wikileaks doc says Israel kept Gaza on ‘brink of collapse’ partly as response to capture of Gilad Shalit
i wouldn’t be surprised if it was posted in one of the threads here also.

Posted by: annie | Jan 20 2011 14:56 utc | 63

23-story rocket launches U.S. spy satellite
Ahh, this makes sense then:
FAA warns of ongoing GPS issues in southeastern US due to Defense Department ‘tests’
Just wonder are they spying on us, or them.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 21 2011 2:48 utc | 65

b real – that seems like some pretty shocking news. Blackwater angling for the Somalia market, and the U.S. is starting to use its own ground troops now in Somalia? I guess it is not shocking that Blackwater would try to get into a lucrative war market, but sending in the marines -even if a small unit- really seems more like blatant escalation.

Posted by: Maxcrat | Jan 21 2011 12:00 utc | 67

should have also pointed out this article from last saturday on a separate incident
somaliweyn media center: 10 Al-Shabab fighters apprehended at Burco town in Somaliland

10 men widely believed to be Al-Shabab fighters were overnight apprehended at Burco town in Togdher region in the breakaway state of Somaliland in northern Somalia.
These Al-Shabab men were apprehended in an operation jointly conducted by the authority of the breakaway state of Somaliland and the United State of America.
Residents in Burco town who have early on Saturday morning spoken to Somaliweyn website have verified that the operators who were conducting the operation had with them especial automobiles, the residents have also added that on Friday night they could not sleep well because of airplanes flying in a very low range.
“I assure you that the detained men are all from Al-Shabab faction, and they are combined of natives of Somaliland and some others from Somalia, lately we have been hearing gossips that Al-Shabab are grouping themselves here in Burco, we have also been hearing that operations will soon be conducted, and it has now come” said a resident who has shortened his name as Jama only, because of security reasons.
A police officer in Burco town who has requested his name not to be quoted has as well verified for Somaliweyn website that the men are members of Al-Shabab, and are transferred to Hargeisa the capital of Somaliland where they will be judged.
So far the authority of Somaliland has not officially remarked about these men, and the general situation of Burco town is reported to be relatively calm.

unable to find any other original english-language reporting on either of these two outside of an article at garowe online on the alleged somaliland operation – Somaliland silent as ‘foreign soldiers’ help capture terrorists – which says local accounts were not clear on the nationality of teh foreigners involved. they very well could be operations by a private outfit. otoh, the u.s. military has been involved in similar type operations previously, most notably operation celestial balance.
it has been more than one year now since the harakat al-shabaab mujahideen raised concerns that blackwater was seeping into the scene, Blackwater/Xe mercs arrive in Somalia, Al-Shabab says

Posted by: b real | Jan 21 2011 17:01 utc | 69