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Murtaugh! Murtaugh! Murtaugh!

No, thousands of motherfuckers aren't climbing roofs and shit to find out when the next Lethal Weapon hits production.

Source: Democracy Now

...we drove in this caravan—the first car with the Aristides, the second car with the delegation who had accompanied him, including Danny Glover.

Thousands of people were crushing in on the house. The windows — people were trying to get in — but, also it was a controlled pandemonium.

Thousands of people came to celebrate Jean Bertrand Aristide...

For those of you who don't get the gravity of this situation...Aristide coming back to Haiti is like Tupac getting out of jail. There are scores to settle, records to set straight, & millions to uplift. The two presidential candidates, Martelly & Manigat - quiet like those church mice B.I.G. & Puff.

If you're not caught up, you're in luck. Skip Wikipedia & those shitty wire writeups. There's one article that sums up all this drama & it was written by Dr. Paul Farmer. Just so you understand how fucking credible this guy is, here's a quick bio:

Source: Better World Heroes

While conducting anthropology research in Haiti, Dr. Farmer was shocked by the lack of medical care that the poor received. In 1987, he and some friends started a charity hospital in central Haiti, providing free health care to the poor. Partners in Health has grown into an international organization with projects in Peru, Russia and Rwanda. In addition to overseeing these projects, Dr. Farmer is also a professor of Medical Anthropology at Harvard and an attending physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.

His article in the London Review of Books takes you from Haiti's past to the present. It explains Aristide's rise & removal. I'll share some excerpts here, but do head over to the source...because it's like I said, this is THE article you need to get caught up:

Source: The London Review Of Books

I learned about Haiti’s history while working on medical projects on the country’s central plateau. When I first travelled there in 1983, the Duvalier family dictatorship had been in place for a quarter of a century. There was no dissent. The Duvaliers and their military dealt ruthlessly with any opposition, while the judiciary and the rest of the world looked the other way. Haiti was already known as the poorest country in the Western world, and those who ran it argued that force was required to police deep poverty.

Haitians are still living with the legacy of the slave trade and of the revolt that finally removed the French. The revolt began in 1791, and more than a decade of war followed; France’s largest expeditionary force, led by General Leclerc, Napoleon’s brother-in-law, was sent to put down the rebellion. As the French operation flagged, the slave general, Toussaint l’Ouverture, was invited to a parley. He was kidnapped and taken away to a prison in the Jura.

By the late 19th century, the United States had eclipsed France as a force in Haitian affairs. A US military occupation (1915-34) brought back corvée labour and introduced bombing from the air, while officials in Washington created the institutions that Haitians would have to live with: the army, above all, which now claims to have the country ‘in its hands’, was created by an act of the US Congress. Demobilised by Aristide in 1995, it never knew a non-Haitian enemy.

Aristide’s elevation from slum priest to presidential candidate took place against a background of right-wing death squads and threatened military coups. He rose quickly in the eyes of Haitians, but his stock plummeted in the United States. The New York Times, which relies heavily on informants who can speak English or French, had few kind words for him. ‘He’s a cross between the Ayatollah and Fidel,’ one Haitian businessman was quoted as saying. ‘If it comes to a choice between the ultra-left and the ultra-right, I’m ready to form an alliance with the ultra-right.’

Did the US and France have a hand in Aristide’s removal? Were he and his wife being held against their will? Most of Aristide’s claims, initially disputed by US officials from Noriega to Donald Rumsfeld, are now acknowledged to be true.

The salvage operation came to an end last month as ‘rebels’ continued to ‘take cities’. I work in these ‘cities’ and I saw the rebels’ modus operandi. They came in, shot the police – who usually numbered no more than two or three – and left. Only a similarly equipped counterforce could have stopped them. The beleaguered government appealed for help in the Security Council, but this was delayed by the Bush administration – delayed long enough for the government to fall, or be pushed out.

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