Commentary
Oil, gas, gold, copper, etc., in Haiti equals US occupation
By Jerry Mazza | Online Journal Associate Editor
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5558.shtmlFeb 9, 2010, 00:25
This discovery comes from an incredibly deep well of information in the
writings of Ezili Danto (Marguerite Laurent), in her article, Part 2, Oil in
Haiti as the economic reasons for the US/UN occupation, written in January.
Danto's opening line links to Part 1 of the story from her website, and
contains a cache of press clippings by her and other Haitian authors, dated
October 2009. Both parts are worth their weight in the gold of truth, revealing
recent events as part of an ongoing privatization of Haiti's abundant assets,
with Papa Clinton plus 20,000 US troops there to put a benign face on guarding
those assets as a "humanitarian effort."
She writes, "After the earthquake, I questioned whether oil drilling could
have triggered the earthquake (Did mining and oil drilling trigger the Haiti
earthquake?)
Then suddenly, after spending years hitting myself against Officialdom's
colonial rock that kept denying Haiti had significant resources. After being
called crazy and un-American for writing that the 2010 earthquake gives the US
the perfect disaster-capitalism opportunity to come out from behind the UN and
openly occupy Haiti to secure Haiti's oil, strategic location and other
riches for the corporatocracy. Just after I wrote about oil drilling causing
earthquakes, on the following Tuesday, a veteran oil company man comes forward
in Businessweek to say, and one wonders how he can so authoritatively speculate
about the area of the faultline without intimate knowledge of the drillings,
explorations, Haiti's wellheads and oil map, et al, but nonetheless his
sudden, seemingly unprompted REVELATION, is that Haiti lies in an area that has
undiscovered amounts of oil, it must have oil and the earthquake 'may have
left clues' to petroleum reservoirs! Oil that, uhmmm, 'could aid economic
recovery in the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation, a geologist said.'
(Haiti Earthquake May Have Exposed Gas, Aiding Economy by Jim Polson, Jan. 26,
2010, Bloomberg.) Yep, yep he may really mean: 'that could aid Haiti's
US-occupied economy recover its strategic oil reserves' for the global elite.
No? I could be wrong, but I am thinking 'and the cover up, starts.' But I
won't say so. Let Stephen Pierce tell the story."
The geologist, Stephen Pierce, who worked in the region for 30 years for
companies like Mobil Corp, reported in a telephone interview with Business
Week, "The quake may have cracked rock formations along the fault, allowing
gas or oil to temporarily seep towards the surface."
Pierce added that "A geologist . . . tracing that fault zone from
Port-au-Prince to the border looking for gas and oil seeps, may find a
structure that hasn't been drilled." Pierce, now working for Zion Oil & Gas
Company, a Dallas-based company drilling in Israel, also said, "A discovery
could significantly improve the country's economy and stimulate further
exploration," as Danto said earlier.
He also contributed information that "The Greater Antilles, which includes
Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and their offshore waters,
probably hold at least 142 million barrels of oil and 159 cubic feet of gas,
according to a 2000 report by the US Geological Survey. Undiscovered amounts
may be as high as 941 million barrels of oil and 1.2 trillion cubic feet of
gas, according to the report. Among nations in the northern Caribbean, Cuba and
Jamaica have awarded offshore leases for oil and gas development. Trinidad and
Tobago, South American islands off the coast of Venezuela, account for most
Caribbean oil production, according to the US Energy Department."
So, quite naturally Haiti has a sizeable reserve of oil and natural gas. Why
would it not? It shares the Caribbean waters with surrounding oil producing
islands. Also, it isn't news to the US, but it definitely is not news to a
30-year geology veteran who worked for oil companies like Mobil Corp.
In fact, there's always been oil in Haiti. US/USAID actually guaranteed an
oil contract for a US businessman named Charles C. Valentine as far back as
November 1962, curiously a year before the JFK assassination, one of the things
on JFK's plate back then being the cancelation of oil-depletion allowances.
Meanwhile, US/USAI gave Valentine's company monopoly control over pretty much
everything to do with oil in Haiti. Then the agency paid him to take a walk. He
claimed $327,304 from the agency, which was itself able to "extract" it
from the Haitian government, plus $4,398 in interest charges. So there's a
not to pretty a picture here of what was going on then and, most probably, now.
Danto provides material from the Haitian scholar Dr. Georges Michel, who claims
the US knew about oil and natural gas reserves back in 1908 and began
explorations in the 1950s, locking up "strategic gas reserves for the US,"
to be tapped when Mid-East oil became less valuable. The unspoken rule here is
that hyped scarcities of oil keep prices high. Yet, oil companies have to have
a full tank somewhere in case Mid-East supplies diminish sharply, raising
prices, for whatever reasons, the War on Terror, hostilities in Iraq, embargos
on Iran, to mention a few.
But the US still needed to keep dictatorial governments in power in Haiti as
its ace in the hole, and try to overthrow any duly elected democratic
governments from 1991 on, for fear some popular president might want to
nationalize oil and gas reserves for the benefit of the bitingly poor Haitian
people as Hugo Chavez did in Venezuela. Ms. Danto points us to an article by
Ginette and Daniel Mathurin that says there's more oil in Haiti than in
Venezuela.
As mentioned earlier, Danto writes, "The earthquake(s) may have just been a
large hydraulic fracturing or 'fracking' operation . . . to release the
hydrocarbons from isolated pockets so oil and natural gas could be more easily
accessed. Or, perhaps drilling at the existing wellheads in Port au Prince may
have linked up with existing fractures and interconnected to affect the
fault-line and cause the earthquake as an unintended consequence. There have
been reports of minor earthquakes in Port au Prince these last few years of
very small magnitudes. They could have caused damage that interconnected with
the latest fracking to destabilize the fault line, cause the earthquake."
(And then there's always the ever present HAARP).
That said, read every word of this article. Then move to the articles in part
one, including one on Clinton's reasons for being there, "Deep Water ports
built to take tanker off-loads from other oil or Haitian oil sources." Part 2
also provides you with a detailed history of US privatizing while Haiti battles
for its life, struggling with human trafficking, abduction of children for
slave labor and pedophilia. Frankly, I can't write it any better than Ms.
Danto and her fellow Haitian writers, whose hearts are as deep as the ocean,
intellect clear as the Haitian sky, souls angry as the island hurricanes.
Beyond that look for a significant article from Part 2, Haiti's Riches:
Interview with Ezili Danto on Mining in Haiti. This interview goes beyond oil
and gas to the US and other foreign powers mining for gold, copper, uranium,
bauxite, and other natural resources in Haiti. Her comments note the potential
environmental impact, poisoning of water, air, earth, and people, in the mining
processes. It also deals with the absence of significant payment to the Haitian
people for their resources, but rather using the people as low-paid, slave
laborers to extract and give away their own national wealth. It's the awful
irony of colonialism revisited.
It includes tales of US deal-making with puppet governments under the first
coup d'etat from 1991-4 (under Bush Sr.), and from the last coup d'etat in
2004 (under Bush Jr.). The 10-year period between coups, during which the duly
elected Aristide was Haiti's president, were halcyon years for Haiti. But
Aristide, a catholic priest, was kidnapped after the last coup from his own
country by US operatives. Consequently, the misery, human and natural, severely
intensified by 2008.
This interview comes also with a call for accountability, transparency, and
laws for a fair share of financial reparations to the people of Haiti. Danto
points out that her people are not beggars, except through the actions of their
foreign oppressors, primarily the US. This article, as the others, is well
worth your time and attention. It will take the wind out of the sails of our
current media rhetoric, projecting ourselves as Haiti's benefactors fallen
like angels from the sky.
In fact, Danto writes, "imposed famine from fraudulent 'free trade'
policies are destroying Haitian food sovereignty, increasing violence and
organized kidnappings, drug-dealings and arms trafficking, and, perhaps
genocide and forced sterilization by this wholesale foreign-foreign-imposed
(UNICEF/WHO [World Health Organization] $10 million dollar) vaccination program
in UN occupied Haiti)." This is excerpted from Danto's Note "Genocide by
vaccination in Haiti" and "Is this a way to sterilize women, as was done to
Puerto Rican women?" from June 15, 2008.
Let me sign off now, so you can get to read these links. Class is out. Life
begins again, with all of us trying to make a united effort to help Haiti grab
the helm of its future, and not drown in the schemes and avarice of the giant
from the north, including some Canadian sharpies. They constitute, as Danto
says, "the UN/US military proxy occupation securing oil/gas reserves from
Haiti.
The wealthy, powerful and well-armed . . . robbing the Haitian people blind."
In short, Danto's writings and press-clippings constitute one of the few
sources in the world where you will find these crimes against humanity so
explicitly described.
Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer and life-long resident of New York City.
Reach him at
gvmaz@verizon.net. His new book, "State Of Shock: Poems from
9/11 on" is available at
www.jerrymazza.com, Amazon or
Barnesandnoble.com.
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BIG OIL BEHIND HAITI QUAKE?
By Victor Thorn
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/haiti_oil__210.htmlDid American petroleum companies murder hundreds of thousands of Haitians while
extracting oil from their shores? In an exclusive Jan. 28 interview, social
commentator and human rights attorney Ezili Danto believes "hydraulic
fracturing" caused by drillers searching for oil may have caused the Jan. 12
earthquake.
Yes, oil is Haiti's smoking gun. Why do you think 20,000 American troops now
occupy and control this impoverished nation? On Jan. 28, 2009, geologist Daniel
Mathurin revealed, "Haiti's oil reserves are larger than those of
Venezuela. An Olympic pool compared to a glass of water is the comparison."
Indeed, Haiti may have 20 times more oil than Venezuela. Daniel and Ginette
Mathurin mapped 20 oil sites (five of them major), and, oddly enough, the
quake's epicenter occurred in the exact same area where the Port-au-Prince
resources exist. Imagine, one of the largest caches of oil in the Western
Hemisphere, and now over a million residents are displaced or deceased.
In a Jan. 26 commentary, Pastor Chuck Baldwin asked, "Why was an
earthquake of this magnitude not felt beyond Port-au-Prince?" He continues,
"People living in the adjoining country of Dominican Republic universally say
they felt nothing." He concludes, "It is being called 'miraculous' that
an earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale did not
produce a colossal tsunami."
Ms. Danto also found the localized destruction very suspicious.
"Port-au-Prince hasn't had an earthquake since 1771," she said. "What
we're seeing is similar to Hurricane Katrina. Look at how many people never
returned to where they originally lived. Perhaps the oil cartels needed to get
rid of certain people near the coastline where they wanted it cleared. If Haiti
were a piece of dirt with just black people and no oil or minerals, they would
have left us alone. We wouldn't see all the investment money and troops; nor
would the U.S. have built the fifth largest embassy in the world in this tiny
little country."
To whom specifically is she referring? U.S. companies have known since 1908
that Haiti teemed with oil reserves. In the 1950s and 1960s, two different
contractors were bought off to not develop these sites. CIA files also show
that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) verified contracts
in 1962 regarding these possible oil reserve sites.
Ms. Danto explores the economic ramifications of this situation: "Oil
companies in the 1960s and 1970s didn't want to add more supply to the market
and allow prices to plummet," she said. "So, they locked down these
deposits and kept them in reserve until the 21st century when Middle Eastern
reserves began waning. For the past 50 years, Haiti has been called the Western
Hemisphere's poorest country. Oil profits could have vastly changed the lives
of these people. Now we're being fleeced, and our resources are being stolen.
Haiti has always been a dumping ground, including the theft of our forests and
minerals."
In mining Haiti's riches, Ms. Danto recounts, "There were areas in Haiti
hidden behind UN guns, fenced off where Haitians knew nothing about what these
soldiers were doing," she said. "There were barricades around
Port-au-Prince, and we couldn't see what the UN soldiers were doing. This
activity started after the Bush-led coup d'�tat in 2004. The areas blocked
off were the same places where experts said oil reserves existed."
To illustrate the abundance of this natural resource, Dr. Georges Michel wrote
on March 27, 2004, "In 1975 we bathed in the waters of Les Cayes and noticed
that our feet were covered by a sort of black oil seeping from the seabed."
An even more interesting point is Ms. Danto's revelation that a series of
minor "earthquakes" registering near 2.0 on the Richter scale have been
occurring for the past couple of years. A geologist also informed her that the
7.0 earthquake took place six miles below where oil companies were drilling.
Also curious is a Jan. 15 statement by Bob Brewin, a military-technology writer
and editor at the popular web site Next
Gov.com. Brewin said that one day prior
to the earthquake, Jean Demay of the Defense Information Systems Agency visited
the U.S. Southern Command in Miami, where U.S. forces were conducting exercises
on how to deal with a major earthquake in Haiti.
Indeed, one day later this catastrophe transpired. As the U.S. military now
controls Port-au-Prince, are U.S. government efforts to rebuild their
infrastructure simply a ruse to grab Haiti's oil?
Ms. Danto answers this question very adroitly. "Most of Haiti's major deep
water ports have been privatized since the Bush 2004 regime change in Haiti."
She then noted in 2009, "If there are substantial oil and gas reserves in
Haiti, the U.S.-Euro genocide and crimes against the Haitian population has not
begun."
