Haiti became the world’s first black-led republic and the first independent Caribbean state when it threw off French colonial control and slavery in a series of wars in the early 19th century.

However, decades of poverty, environmental degradation, violence, instability and dictatorship have left it as the poorest nation in the Americas.

A mostly mountainous country with a tropical climate, Haiti’s location, history and culture – epitomized by voodoo – once made it a potential tourist hot spot, but instability and violence, especially since the 1980s, have severely dented that prospect.

Haiti achieved notoriety during the brutal dictatorships of the voodoo physician Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude, or “Baby Doc”. Tens of thousands of people were killed under their 29-year rule.

Hopes that the election in 1990 of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a former priest, would herald a brighter future were dashed when he was overthrown by the military a short time later.

AT A GLANCE Politics: Democratic rule was restored in 2006, two years after a violent revolt ousted former leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide; bitter political divisions persist Economy: The economy is in ruins and unemployment is chronic International: The UN has deployed peacekeepers; international aid is seen as key to recovery Timeline

Although economic sanctions and US-led military intervention forced a return to constitutional government in 1994, Haiti’s fortunes did not pick up, with allegations of electoral irregularities, ongoing extra-judicial killings, torture and brutality.

A bloody rebellion, and pressure from the US and France, forced Mr Aristide out of the country in 2004.

Since then, an elected leadership has taken over from an interim government and a UN stabilisation force has been deployed. But Haiti is still plagued by violent confrontations between rival gangs and political groups and the UN has described the human rights situation as “catastrophic”.

Meanwhile, Haiti’s most serious underlying social problem, the huge wealth gap between the impoverished Creole-speaking black majority and the French-speaking minority, 1% of whom own nearly half the country’s wealth, remains unaddressed.

Many Haitians seek work and a better life in the US or other Caribbean nations, including the neighbouring Dominican Republic, which is home to hundreds of thousands of Haitian migrants.

Furthermore, the infrastructure has all but collapsed and drug trafficking has corrupted the judicial system and the police.

Haiti is also ill-equipped to deal with the aftermath of the tropical storms that frequently sweep across the island, with severe deforestation having left it vulnerable to flooding.

Facts

Leaders

President: Rene Preval

Rene Preval, often described as a champion of the poor, won presidential elections in February 2006 with 51% of the vote.

Rene Preval was declared 2006 poll victor after days of protests

He was declared the victor after officials agreed to discount thousands of blank ballot papers. His supporters had taken to the streets, rejecting initial results which would have led to a second round.

Mr Preval, the front-runner, said “massive fraud” was being used to deny him a first-round victory.

Rene Preval is a former president and a one-time ally of Haiti’s exiled former leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

He says he wants to tackle social inequalities and to create jobs. In the run-up to his inauguration he visited potential donor countries in pursuit of aid.

Born in Port-au-Prince in 1943, Rene Preval studied in Belgium and lived in the US in the 1970s. He is often portrayed as being shy and softly-spoken. He was president from 1996-2001, between Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s first and second terms.

Mr Aristide was Haiti’s first democratically-elected president, taking office in 1990 amid great popular support.

Having weathered a bloody military coup and ongoing political and economic crises, he was forced out in February 2004 when opposition to his rule grew increasingly violent.

Now in exile in South Africa, Mr Aristide has promised to return to Haiti and accuses the US of forcing him into exile. Washington denies this.

Prime Minister: Jean-Max Bellerive

Jean-Max Bellerive was appointed premier by President Preval in October 2009 after the sacking of the government headed by Michelle Pierre-Louis, who had held the post for just over a year.

Jean-Max Bellerive previously served as planning minister

Haiti’s Senate had voted to dissolve Ms Pierre-Louis’ cabinet amid a power struggle that threatened to undermine efforts to attract foreign investment to the country.

The senators who pushed through a censure motion against Ms Pierre-Louis accused her of failing to make sufficient progress in setting Haiti on the path to economic recovery.

Mr Bellerive trained as an economist and has long experience in public administration. He has held a variety of government posts, and was an official in the administration of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

As minister of planning and external cooperation under Ms Pierre-Louis, he played an important role in courting foreign investors.

He faces the task of establishing his authority quickly, so as to avoid Haiti being plunged into a new phase of instability that could jeopardise what progress has been made in attracting investment.

The United Nations is renewing its multi-million dollar appeal for Somalia, which it says is facing a peak in its 18 years of humanitarian crisis.  U.N. agencies pledge to continue assistance to millions of needy Somali people despite the attack in the Somali capital, Mogadishu on Thursday, which claimed 22 lives.

The United Nations says the latest bloody attack in Mogadishu underlines how urgent it is for the international community to provide humanitarian aid to Somalia.

The United Nations recently appealed for 690 million dollars for humanitarian operations in Somalia throughout 2010.  The U.N. says there was a decline in contributions in 2009, so agencies will have little or no money to carry-over for projects in the New Year.

The U.N. says it is absolutely crucial for nations to provide early funding so people can get the help they so desperately need.

U.N. humanitarian spokeswoman, Elizabeth Byrs, says the United Nations is committed to providing relief to the millions of people in the country, despite the increasing dangers. “Even though the humanitarian space has been reduced, we continue our aid and relief operation.  That is why it is so important to get a commitment from the international community and get the adequate funding to the appeal for 2010,” she said.

I can tell you there are a bunch of idots in our government.  The BBC reports that the US will start to pay the Taliban to switch sides.  Well, you know you are losing the war when you have to pay your enemy not to kill you!  This of course is not the first time the US has resorted to paying off its enemies.

October 28, 2009 “BBC” — The US military in Afghanistan is to be allowed to pay Taliban fighters who renounce violence against the government in Kabul.   The move is included in a defense bill which President Obama is set to sign.  Such payments have already been widely used by US commanders in Iraq, but it is the first time the system is being formally adopted in Afghanistan.  Early on Wednesday, Afghan troops were engaged in a shootout with suspected militants at a house in Kabul.

A day earlier eight US soldiers were killed in bomb attacks in southern Afghanistan.  The deaths make October the deadliest month for American forces in the eight-year war in Afghanistan.  President Obama is yet to decide whether to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan.  Mr Obama has said he will not risk their lives “unless it is absolutely necessary”.
The latest attacks come amid heightened tension in Afghanistan in the run-up to the second round of a presidential election marred by widespread fraud in favour of incumbent President Hamid Karzai.

The Commander’s Emergency Response Programme, or Cerp, was set up to give the US military the means to clear roads, dig wells and provide other urgent humanitarian assistance to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, the BBC’s Richard Lister in Washington says.  But in Iraq, the money can also be given to insurgents provided they switch sides. Backers of the Cerp scheme say it enabled some 90,000 formerly hostile Iraqis to form local militias and protect their towns from militants, our correspondent says.  He adds that now the same authority is being given to US commanders in Afghanistan.  A clause in the annual defense appropriations bill says they can use the money to support the “re-integration into Afghan society” of those who have renounced violence against the Afghan government.

Although $1.3bn (£691m) has been authorized for the fund as a whole, no specific sum has been allocated to the re-integration programmes, our correspondent says.  The Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, Senator Carl Levin, has said he envisages the money being used to pay former Taliban fighters to protect their communities.

The Central Intelligence Agency is refusing to release a series of key documents about its secret prison and torture program. The announcement came in response to a court-imposed deadline in a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. The CIA says releasing information on its so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” would jeopardize national security by exposing classified intelligence sources and methods. The refusal comes one week after the Justice Department released a previously classified CIA report on torture at overseas prisons and launched a probe into the conduct of CIA interrogators. The investigation has been criticized for focusing on low-level operatives and not the Bush administration officials who authorized the practices the operatives carried out.

The documents that the CIA wants kept under wraps could provide a wealth of information on the Bush administration’s role. The documents include President George W. Bush’s September 2001 authorization for jailing CIA prisoners abroad, cables between CIA officials in the secret prisons and their superiors in Washington, and memos by CIA lawyers on the operations’ legality. Alex Abdo of ACLU’s National Security Project said, “The Obama administration must…release all crucial documents that would shed further light on the origins and scope of the Bush administration’s torture program. The American public has a right to know the full truth about the torture that was committed in its name.”

It’s amazing how much you will learn about 9/11 only if you read.  This is a very important article that I’m reposting from DailyKos.

Summary
The bombshell here is obviously that certain people in the US were using Bin Laden up to September 11, 2001.

It is important to understand why: the US outsourced terror operations to al Qaeda and the Taliban for many years, promoting the Islamization of Central Asia in an attempt to personally profit off military sales as well as oil and gas concessions.

The silence by the US government on these matters is deafening. So, too, is the blowback.

How much insider trading occurred in the days leading up to 9/11? How compromised is the evidence against alleged hijackers because of serious authentication problems with a key Dulles Airport videotape? To what extent does the testimony of more than five hundred firefighters differ from official reports of what happened at the World Trade Center buildings that day? How inseparably connected are Western covert operations to al-Qaeda? How is Islamophobia used to sustain US imperialism?

Paul Zarembka is a professor of economics at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Since 1977, he has been the general editor for Research in Political Economy. He has authored Toward a Theory of Economic Development, edited Frontiers in Econometrics, and co-edited Essays in Modern Capital Theory.

There is about 30-45 seconds of ads before the interview actually starts.  The interview is done with Paul Zarembka.

Wow, well actually I should be surprise that Bush stop majorly pursing Bin Laden 6 months after the 9/11 attacks.  Watch the video below.