Human rights workers on the ground in Martissant, Haiti, reported yesterday that the wife of Rudy Kernizan has been apprehended. Rudy himself -- chief of the vigilante Lame Ti Manchete (Little Machet Army) -- has escaped reportedly to the DR.

Months after Haiti's interim government stepped down, the United Nations MINUSTAH force and the Haitian police continue heavy-handed incursions into Port-au-Prince's poor communities.  

At approximately 8:30 (PST) on Wednesday night (July 5, 2006), Reuters News Online has suddenly referred to Lopez Obrador (PRD), the leftist candidate, as having a 1.5% lead over Felipe Calderon (PAN), the conservative candidate heavily supported by Washington insiders and NED "democratization" grantee organizations.

As Haiti’s legislative run-off elections approach, it is worthwhile to review elements of Washington’s campaign to build the vote in favor of its local client parties. This “democracy promotion” – which is anything but that – is strategically critical to winning the Haitian parliament, with which President-elect René Préval will name the new prime minister, Haiti’s most powerful executive post.

For many activists, academics, and labor historians in the 1980’s the AFL-CIO became referred to as the AFL-CIA.  Founded in 1961 the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) was the AFL-CIO’s foreign organizing wing for Latin America and the Caribbean.  Along with its counterparts in Africa, Asia, and Europe, AIFLD was used to undermine leftist trade movements, support dictators such as the Duvalier’s and back military coups in Chile and Brazil.

            Throughout the Cold War, the CIA heavily infiltrated AIFLD, as discussed in Phillip Agee’s 1984 whistle blower Inside the Company: CIA Diary.  Agee fingered Serafino Romauldi as being involved in AIFLD throughout the 1940’s, 50’s, and 60’s as a known CIA asset heading up AIFLD at one point.  In 1984, with ‘Baby Doc’ Jean-Claude Duvalier’s consent the Federation des Ouvriers Syndiques (FOS) was founded as a conservative pro-business union with the assistance of AIFLD.

Washington, D.C.- Instead of U.S. taxpayer’s money going to NGOs such as the Catholic Relief Organization, CARE, or Oxfam, $6 million in U.S. economic aid may soon be going straight to the bank accounts of a dictatorship, mired in corruption and massive human rights abuses, for the recruitment and deployment of American citizens.

On May 4, 2005 a privately funded NGO, the Haiti Democracy Project published on its website (haitipolicy.org) a “fact-finding report” carried out during mid February of 2005 in Haiti.  The fact finding mission, while visiting Haiti, met with nine members of Group 184 (a coalition of the wealthy elite) and 26 others, ranging from Coup Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, to U.N. and Haitian Police officials, U.S. Ambassador James Foley, and the Brazilian, Argentinean, Canadian, and Dominican Republic Ambassadors to Haiti.