Or I should really say no fucking change at all.
This is from today's
Democracy Now with Bill Quigley, human rights attorney & legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights discussing two of Obama's Haiti policies.
<snip>
The Obama administration has resumed deporting Haitian immigrants to Haiti despite a cholera outbreak there that has killed at least 4,000 people. Last month, 34-year-old Wildrick Guerrier died of cholera-like symptoms shortly after he was deported from the United States. The U.S. government meanwhile remains opposed to the return of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide despite authorization by the Haitian government, while pushing a runoff election vote marred by controversy, including the exclusion of Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas party in the opening round.
<snip>
BILL QUIGLEY: It is just shameful that any government, particularly our government, would, at the time that—the exact days that we are warning people from the United States not to go to Haiti because of cholera and unrest and that, on the exact days that we’re warning citizens not to go, we are shipping plane loads of individuals there, that go into the prison system, where people are confined and exposed not just to the horrors of the prison system in Haiti, which are substantial, but to cholera, as well.
And this is coming not from some low-level official; this is coming directly from the White House. We filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights to stop that. The White House itself responded to us, to the Center for Constitutional Rights and the other groups that were doing this, saying, "Look, we understand, but we think things are stabilizing, and we think people will be safe." Just in the last couple days, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in the United States have said, "Look, you shouldn’t be sending people back there." It’s literally—as we’ve seen, it is a death sentence for people, who have lived long lives in the United States, some of them only arrested or convicted of marijuana or something like that at some point, and we’re sending them back. It is just a horrific situation.
Juan & Amy then switch the discussion to the Obama administration's political machinations in Haiti. Hillary Clinton did 5 Sunday talk shows from Egypt and then flew to Haiti "to try to pressure the Haitian government to allow a runoff between the two candidates that the United States wanted to have in the runoff."
BILL QUIGLEY: Yeah, this is like a very bad high school student council election, really, is what’s happening. But the stakes are so very high. First, they exclude half the candidates who want to run. Then they come up with a crooked election that actually happens, and the government certifies the wrong people as being in charge. And then, after international pressure, now they are saying that two people can run, essentially somebody who’s a Republican and somebody who would be a Tea Partier in this country—and that decision, again, made by the United States, not made by the electoral council in Haiti. So this entire thing is a puppet show, really, by the United States government. Haiti desperately needs leadership of integrity and the like. And the Congressional Black Caucus, a lot of international human rights groups are saying, "Please, start over. Scrap this farce, this facade, this joke that’s going on there. And let everybody run and have a fair election, and then let us begin to rebuild our country."
People we deport to Haiti will be safe. The Gulf area is just peachy-keen -- no problems here, look away. The air at Ground Zero is fine -- just go about your business....oh wait, that last one wasn't this administration, was it?
:grr: :cry:
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