Peter Hallward
Nine days after the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti on 12 January 2010, it's now clear that the initial phase of the U.S.-led relief operation has conformed to the three fundamental tendencies that have shaped the more general course of the island's recent history. It has adopted military priorities and strategies. It has sidelined Haiti's own leaders and government, and ignored the needs of the majority of its people. And it has proceeded in ways that reinforce the already harrowing gap between rich and poor.
All three tendencies aren't just connected, they are mutually reinforcing. These same tendencies will continue to govern the imminent reconstruction effort as well, unless determined political action is taken to counteract them.
I
Haiti is not only o... (continue)
Peter Hallward
Nine days after the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti on 12 January 2010, it's now clear that the initial phase of the U.S.-led relief operation has conformed to the three fundamental tendencies that have shaped the more general course of the island's recent history. It has adopted military priorities and strategies. It has sidelined Haiti's own leaders and government, and ignored the needs of the majority of its people. And it has proceeded in ways that reinforce the already harrowing gap between rich and poor.
All three tendencies aren't just connected, they are mutually reinforcing. These same tendencies will continue to govern the imminent reconstruction effort as well, unless determined political action is taken to counteract them.
I
Haiti is not only one of the poorest countries in the world, it is also one of the most polarised and unequal in its disparities in wealth and access to political power. A small clique of rich and well-connected families continues to dominate the country and its economy while more than half the population, according to the IMF, survive on a household income of around 44 US pennies per day.
Mass destitution has grown far more severe in recent decades. Starting in the 1970s, internationally imposed neo-liberal 'adjustments' and austerity measures finally succeeded in doing what no Haitian government had managed to do since winning independence in 1804: in order to set the country on the road towards 'economic development', they have driven large numbers of small farmers off their land and into densely crowded urban slums. A small minority of these internal refugees may be lucky enough to find sweatshop jobs that pay the lowest wages in the region. These wages currently average $2 or $3 a day; in real terms they are worth less than a quarter of their 1980 value.
Haiti's tiny elite owes its privileges to exclusion, exploitation and violence, and it is only violence that allows it to retain them. For much of the last century, Haiti's military and paramilitary forces (with substantial amounts of US support) were able to preserve these privileges on their own. Over the course of the 1980s, however, it started to look as if local military repression might no longer be up to the job. A massive and courageous popular mobilisation (known as Lavalas) culminated in 1990 with the landslide election of the liberation theologian Jean-Bertrand Aristide as president. Large numbers of ordinary people began to participate in the political system for the first time, and as political scientist Robert Fatton remembers, 'panic seized the dominant class. It dreaded living in close proximity to la populace and barricaded itself against Lavalas.’
Nine months later, the army dealt with this popular threat in the time-honoured way, with a coup d'état. Over the next three years, around 4,000 Aristide supporters were killed.
However, when the US eventually allowed Aristide to return in October 1994, he took a surprising and unprecedented step: he abolished the army that had deposed him. As human rights lawyer Brian Concannon (director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti) observed a few years later, ‘it is impossible to overestimate the impact of this accomplishment. It has been called the greatest human rights development in Haiti since emancipation, and is wildly popular.' In 2000, the Haitian electorate gave Aristide a second overwhelming mandate when his party (Fanmi Lavalas) won more than 90% of the seats in parliament.
II
More than anything else, what has happened in Haiti since 1990 should be understood as the progressive clarification of this basic dichotomy – democracy or the army. Unadulterated democracy might one day allow the interests of the numerical majority to prevail, and thereby challenge the privileges of the elite. In 2000, such a challenge became a genuine possibility: the overwhelming victory of Fanmi Lavalas, at all levels of government, raised the prospect of genuine political change in a context in which there was no obvious extra-political mechanism ― no army ― to prevent it.
In order to avoid this outcome, the main strategy of Haiti's little ruling class has been to redefine political questions in terms of 'stability' and 'security', and in particular the security of property and investments. Mere numbers may well win an election or sustain a popular movement but as everyone knows, only an army is equipped to deal with insecurity. The well-armed 'friend of Haiti' that is the United States knows this better than anyone else.
As soon as Aristide was re-elected, a systematic international campaign to bankrupt and destabilise his second government set the stage for a paramilitary insurrection and a further coup d'état, and in 2004, thousands of US troops again invaded Haiti (just as they first did back in 1915) in order to 'restore stability and security' to their 'troubled island neighbour.' An expensive and long-term UN 'stabilisation mission' staffed by 9,000 heavily armed troops soon took over the job of helping to pacify the population and criminalise the resistance. By the end of 2006, thousands more Aristide supporters had been killed.
Over the course of 2009, a suitably stabilised Haitian government agreed to persevere with the privatisation of the country’s remaining public assets , veto a proposal to increase minimum wages to $5 a day, and to bar Fanmi Lavalas (and several other political parties) from participating in the next round of legislative elections.
When it comes to providing stability, today's UN troops are clearly a big improvement over the old indigenous alternative. If things get so unstable that even the ground begins to shake, however, there's still nothing that can beat the world's leading provider of peace and security.
III
In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake that struck on 12 January 2010, it might have seemed hard to counter arguments in favour of allowing the US military, with its 'unrivalled logistical capability', to take de facto control of such a massive relief operation. Weary of bad press in Iraq and Afghanistan, US commanders also seemed glad of this unexpected opportunity to rebrand their armed forces as angels of mercy. As usual, the Haitian government was instructed to be grateful for whatever help it could get.
That was before US commanders actively began – the day after the earthquake struck – to divert aid away from the disaster zone.
As soon as the US air force took control of Haitian airspace, on Wednesday 13 January, they explicitly prioritised military over humanitarian flights. Although most reports from Port-au-Prince emphasised remarkable levels of patience and solidarity on the streets, US commanders made fears of popular unrest and insecurity their number one concern. Their first priority was to avoid what the US Air Force Special Command Public Affairs spokesman (Ty Foster) called another 'Somalia effort' – which is to say, presumably, a situation in which a humiliated US army might once again risk losing military control of a 'humanitarian' mission.
As many observers predicted, however, the determination of US commanders to forestall this risk by privileging guns and soldiers over doctors and food has only succeeded in helping to provoke a few occasional bursts of the very unrest they set out to contain. In order to amass a sufficiently large amount of soldiers and military equipment 'on the ground', the US Air Force diverted plane after plane packed with emergency supplies away from Port-au-Prince. Among many others, World Food Program flights were turned away by US commanders on Thursday and Friday, the New York Times reported, 'so that the United States could land troops and equipment, and lift Americans and other foreigners to safety.'
Many similar flights met a similar fate, right through to the end of the week. Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) alone has so far had to watch at least five planeloads of its medical supplies be turned away. On Saturday 16 January, for instance, 'despite guarantees given by the United Nations and the US Defense Department, an MSF cargo plane carrying an inflatable surgical hospital was blocked from landing in Port-au-Prince and was re-routed to Samana, in Dominican Republic', delaying its arrival by an additional 24 hours. Late on Monday 18 January, MSF 'complained that one of its cargo planes carrying 12 tonnes of medical equipment had been turned away three times from Port-au-Prince airport since Sunday,' despite receiving 'repeated assurances they could land.' By that stage one group of MSF doctors in Port-au-Prince had been 'forced to buy a saw in the market to continue the amputations' upon which the lives of their patients depended.
While US commanders set about restoring security by assembling a force of some 14,000 Marines, residents in some less secure parts of Port-au-Prince soon started to run out of food and water. On 20 January people sleeping in one of the largest and most easily accessed of the many temporary refugee camps in central Port-au-Prince (in Champs Mars) told writer Tim Schwartz, author of the 2008 book Travesty in Haiti, that 'no relief has arrived; it is all being delivered on other side of town, by the US embassy.' Telesur reporter Reed Lindsay confirmed on 20 January, a full eight days after the quake, that the impoverished south-western Port-au-Prince suburb closest to the earthquake's epicentre, Carrefour, still hadn't received any food, aid or medical help.
The BBC's Mark Doyle found the same thing in an eastern (and less badly affected) suburb. 'Their houses are destroyed, they have no running water, food prices have doubled, and they haven't seen a single government official or foreign aid worker since the earthquake struck.' Overall, Doyle observed, 'the international response has been quite pathetic. Some of the aid agencies are working very hard, but there are two ways of reporting this kind of thing. One is to hang around with the aid agencies and hang around with the American spokespeople at the airport, and you'll hear all sorts of stories about what's happening. Another way is to drive almost at random with ordinary people and go and see what's happening in ordinary places. In virtually every area I've driven to, ordinary people say that I was the first foreigner that they'd met.'
Only a full week after the earthquake did emergency food supplies even begin the slow journey from the heavily guarded airport to fourteen 'secure distribution points' in various parts of the city. By that stage, tens of thousands of Port-au-Prince residents had finally come to the conclusion that no aid would be forthcoming, and began to abandon the capital for villages in the countryside.
On Sunday 17 January, Al-Jazeera's correspondent summarised what many other journalists had been saying all week. 'Most Haitians have seen little humanitarian aid so far. What they have seen is guns, and lots of them. Armoured personnel carriers cruise the streets' and 'inside the well-guarded perimeter [of the airport], the US has taken control. It looks more like the Green Zone in Baghdad than a centre for aid distribution.' Late on the same day, the World Food Programme's air logistics officer Jarry Emmanuel confirmed that most of the 200 flights going in and out of the airport each day were still being reserved for the US military: 'their priorities are to secure the country. Ours are to feed.' By Monday 18 January, no matter how many US embassy or military spokesman insisted that 'we are here to help' rather than invade, governments as different as those of France and Venezuela had begun to accuse the US of effectively 'occupying' the country.
IV
The US decision to privilege military over humanitarian traffic at the airport sealed the fate of many thousands of people abandoned in the rubble of lower Port-au-Prince and Léogane. In countries all over the world, search and rescue teams were ready to leave for Haiti within 12 hours of the disaster. Only a few were able to arrive without fatal delays – mainly teams, like those from Venezuela, Iceland and China, who managed to land while Haitian staff still retained control of their airport. Some subsequent arrivals, including a team from the UK, were prevented from landing with their heavy lending equipment. Others, like Canada's several Heavy Urban Search Rescue Teams, were immediately readied but never sent – the teams were told to stand down, the Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon eventually explained, because 'the government had opted to send Canadian Armed Forces instead.'
USAID announced on 19 January that international search and rescue teams, over the course of the first full week after the disaster, had managed to save a grand total of 70 people. The majority of these people were rescued in quite specific locations and circumstances. 'Search-and-rescue operations', observed the Washington Post on 18 January, 'have been intensely focused on buildings with international aid workers, such as the crushed U.N. headquarters, and on large hotels with international clientele.' Tim Schwartz spent much of the first post-quake week as a translator with rescue workers, and was struck by the fact that most of their work was confined to places – the UN's hotel Christophe, the Montana Hotel, the Caribe supermarket – that were not only frequented by foreigners but that could be snugly enclosed within 'secure perimeters.' Elsewhere, he observed, UN 'peacekeepers' did their best to make sure that rescue workers treated onlooking crowds as a source of potential danger rather than assistance.
Until the residents of devastated places like Léogane and Carrefour are somehow able to reassure foreign troops that they will feel 'secure' when visiting their neighbourhoods, UN and US commanders clearly prefer to let them die on their own.
Exactly the same logic has condemned yet more people to death in and around Port-au-Prince's hospitals. In one of the most illuminating reports yet filed from the city, on 20 January Democracy Now's Amy Goodman spoke with Dr. Evan Lyon of Partners in Health/Zamni Lasante from the General Hospital, the most important medical centre in the whole country. Lyon acknowledged there was a need for 'crowd control, so that the patients are not kept from having access', but insisted that 'there's no insecurity [...]. I don’t know if you guys were out late last night, but you can hear a pin drop in this city. It’s a peaceful place. There is no war. There is no crisis except the suffering that’s ongoing [...]. The first thing that [your] listeners need to understand is that there is no insecurity here. There has not been, and I expect there will not be.' On the contrary, Lyon explained, 'this question of security and the rumours of security and the racism behind the idea of security has been our major block to getting aid in. The US military has promised us for several days to bring in machinery, but they’ve been listening to this idea that things are insecure, and so we don’t have supplies.' As of 20 January, the hospital still hadn't received the supplies and medicines needed to treat many hundreds of dying patients. 'In terms of aid relief the response has been incredibly slow. There are teams of surgeons that have been sent to places that were, quote, “more secure," that have ten or twenty doctors and ten patients. We have a thousand people on this campus who are triaged and ready for surgery, but we only have four working operating rooms, without anaesthesia and without pain medications.'
Almost by definition, in post-quake Haiti it seems that anyone or anything that cannot be enclosed in a 'secure perimeter' isn't worth saving.
In their occasional forays outside such perimeters, meanwhile, some Western journalists seemed able to find plenty of reasons for retreating behind them. Lurid stories of looting and gangs soon began to lend 'security experts' like the London-based Stuart Page an aura of apparent authority, when he explained to the BBC's gullible 'security correspondent' Frank Gardner that 'all the security gains made in Haiti in the last few years could now be reversed [...]. The criminal gangs, totalling some 3,000, are going to exploit the current humanitarian crisis, to the maximum degree.'
Another seasoned BBC correspondent, Matt Frei, had a similar story to tell on 18 January, when he found a few scavengers sifting through the remains of a central shopping district. 'Looting is now the only industry here. Anything will do as a weapon. Everything is now run by rival armed groups of thugs.' If Haiti is to avoid anarchy, Frei concluded, 'what may be needed is a full scale military occupation.'
Not even former US president (and former Haiti occupier) Bill Clinton was prepared to go that far. 'Actually', Clinton told Frei, 'when you think about people who have lost everything except what they're carrying on their backs, who not only haven't eaten but probably haven't slept in four days, and when the sun goes down it's totally dark and they spend all night long tripping over bodies living and dead, well, I think they've behaved quite well [...]. They are astonishing people. How can they be so calm in the face of such enormous loss of life and loved ones, and all the physical damage?'
Reporters able to tell the difference between occasional and highly localised bursts of foraging and a full-scale 'descent into anarchy' made much the same point all week, as did dozens of indignant Haitian correspondents. On 17 January, for instance, Ciné Institute director David Belle tried to counter international misrepresentation. 'I have been told that much US media coverage paints Haiti as a tinderbox ready to explode. I'm told that lead stories in major media are of looting, violence and chaos. There could be nothing further from the truth. I have travelled the entire city daily since my arrival. The extent of the damage is absolutely staggering [but...] NOT ONCE have we witnessed a single act of aggression or violence [...]. A crippled city of two million awaits help, medicine, food and water. Most haven't received any. Haiti can be proud of its survivors. Their dignity and decency in the face of this tragedy is itself staggering.'
As anyone can see, however, dignity and decency are no substitute for security. No amount of weapons will ever suffice to reassure those 'fortunate few' whose fortunes isolate them from the people they exploit. As far as the people themselves are concerned, 'security is not the issue', explains Haiti Liberté's Kim Ives. 'We see throughout Haiti the population themselves organizing themselves into popular committees to clean up, to pull out the bodies from the rubble, to build refugee camps, to set up their security for the refugee camps. This is a population which is self-sufficient, and it has been self-sufficient for many years.' But while the people who have lost what little they had have done their best to cope and regroup, the soldiers sent to 'restore order' treat them as potential combatants. 'It’s just the same way they reacted after Katrina', concludes Ives. 'The victims are what’s scary. They’re black people who, you know, had the only successful slave revolution in history. What could be more threatening?'
'According to everyone I spoke with in the centre of the city', wrote Schwarz on 21 January, 'the violence and gang stuff is pure BS.' The relentless obsession with security, agrees Andy Kershaw, is clear proof of the fact that most foreign soldiers and NGO workers 'haven't a clue about the country and its people.' True to form, within hours of the earthquake most of the panicked staff in the US embassy had already been evacuated, and at least one prominent foreign contractor in the garment sector (the Canadian firm Gildan Activewear) announced that it would be shifting production to alternative sewing facilities in neighbouring countries. The price to be paid for such priorities will not be evenly distributed. Up in the higher, wealthier and mostly undamaged parts of Pétionville everyone already knows that it's the local residents 'who through their government connections, trading companies and interconnected family businesses' will once again pocket the lion's share of international aid and reconstruction money.
In order to help keep less well-connected families where they belong, meanwhile, the US Department of Homeland Security has taken 'unprecedented' emergency measures to secure the homeland this past week. Operation 'Vigilant Sentry' will make efficient use of the large naval flotilla the US has assembled around Port-au-Prince. 'As well as providing emergency supplies and medical aid', notes The Daily Telegraph, 'the USS Carl Vinson, along with a ring of other navy and coast guard vessels, is acting as a deterrent to Haitians who might be driven to make the 681 mile sea crossing to Miami.' While Senegal's president Abdoulaye Wade offered 'voluntary repatriation to any Haitian that wants to return to [the land of] their origin', American officials confirmed that they would continue to apply their long-standing (and thoroughly illegal) policy with respect to all Haitian refugees and asylum seekers – to intercept and repatriate them automatically, regardless of the circumstances.
Ever since the quake struck, the US Air Force has taken the additional precaution of flying a radio-transmitting cargo plane for five hours a day over large parts of the country, so as to broadcast a recorded message from Haiti's ambassador in Washington. 'Don’t rush on boats to leave the country', the message says. 'If you think you will reach the U.S. and all the doors will be wide open to you, that’s not at all the case. They will intercept you right on the water and send you back home where you came from.' Not even life-threatening injuries are enough to entitle Haitians to a different sort of American reception. When the dean of medicine at the University of Miami arrived to help set up a field hospital by the airport in Port-au-Prince, he was outraged to find that most seriously injured people in the city were being denied the visas they would need to be transferred to Florida for surgery and treatment. As of 19 January the State Department had authorised a total of 23 exceptions to its golden rule of immigration. 'It’s beyond insane,' O'Neill complained. 'It’s bureaucracy at its worst.'
V
This is the fourth time the US has invaded Haiti since 1915. Although each invasion has taken a different form and responded to a different pretext, all four have been expressly designed to restore 'stability' and 'security' to the island. Earthquake-prone Haiti must now be the most thoroughly stabilised country in the world. Thousands more foreign security personnel are already on their way, to guard the teams of foreign reconstruction and privatisation consultants who in the coming months are likely to usurp what remains of Haitian sovereignty.
Perhaps some of these guards and consultants will help their elite clients achieve another long-cherished dream: the restoration of Haiti's own little army. And perhaps then, for a short while at least, the inexhaustible source of 'instability' in Haiti – the ever-nagging threat of popular political participation and empowerment – may be securely buried in the rubble of its history.
NOTES
[1] An abbreviated version of this article first appeared in The National, 21 January 2010, http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100121/REVIEW/701219960.
[2] See Pål Sletten and Willy Egset, Poverty in Haiti (FAFO, 2004), 9.
[3] IMF, Haiti: Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (November 2006), 7.
[4] Robert Fatton, Haiti’s Predatory Republic (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002), 86-87, 83.
[5] Brian Concannon, ‘Lave Men, Siye Atè: Taking Human Rights Seriously', in Melinda Miles and Eugenia Charles, eds. Let Haiti LIVE: Unjust US Policies Towards its Oldest Neighbor (Coconut Creek FL: Educa Vision, 2004), 92.
[6] See for instance Jeb Sprague, 'Haiti's Classquake', HaitiAnalysis 19 January 2010, http://www.haitianalysis.com/2010/1/19/haiti-s-classquake.
[7] BBC Radio 4 News, 16 January 2010, 22:00GMT.
[8] Ginger Thompson and Damien Cave, 'Officials Strain to Distribute Aid to Haiti as Violence Rises', New York Times 17 January 2010.
[9] 'Médecins Sans Frontières says its plane turned away from US-run airport', Daily Telegraph 19 January 2010, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/haiti/7031203/Haiti-earthquake-Medecins-Sans-Frontieres-says-its-plane-turned-away-from-US-run-airport.html.
[10] 'Doctors Without Borders Cargo Plane With Full Hospital and Staff Blocked From Landing in Port-au-Prince', 18 January 2010, http://doctorswithoutborders.org/press/release.cfm?id=4165&cat=press-release.
[11] 'America sends paratroopers to Haiti to help secure aid lines', The Times 20 January 2010, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6994523.ece.
[12] Email from Tim Schwartz, January 20, 2010.
[13] 'No aid [in Carrefour]. In the morning at UN base they said they would distribute there, but it didn't happen' (Reed Lindsay, Honor and Respect Foundation Newsletter, 20 January 2010,
http://www.hrfhaiti.org/earthquake/). Cf. Luis Felipe Lopez, 'Town at epicenter of quake stays in isolation', The Miami Herald 17 January, 2010.
[14] BBC Radio 4, News at Ten, 18 January 2010.
[15] Ed Pilkington, 'We're not here to fight, US troops insist', The Guardian 18 January 2010.
[16] 'Disputes Emerge over Haiti aid control', Al Jazeera 17 January 2010.
[17] Ginger Thompson and Damien Cave, 'Officials strain to distribute aid to Haiti as violence rises', New York Times 17 January 2010.
[18] 'Haiti aid agencies warn: chaotic and confusing relief effort is costing lives', The Guardian 18 January 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/18/haiti-aid-distribution-confusion-warning.
[19] Don Peat, 'HUSAR not up to task, feds say: Search and rescue team told to stand down', Toronto Sun 17th January 2010, http://www.torontosun.com/news/haiti/2010/01/17/12504981.html.
[20] USAID, http://www.usaid.gov/helphaiti/index.html, accessed on 20 January 2010.
[21] William Booth, 'Haiti's elite spared from much of the devastation', Washington Post, 18 January 2010.
[22] Tim Schwarz, phonecall with the author, 18 January 2010; cf. Tim Schwartz, 'Is this anarchy? Outsiders believe this island nation is a land of bandits. Blame the NGOs for the “looting,”' NOW Toronto, 21 January 2010, http://www.nowtoronto.com/news/story.cfm?content=173333.
[23] 'With Foreign Aid Still at a Trickle, Devastated Port-au-Prince General Hospital Struggles to Meet Overwhelming Need', Democracy Now! 20 January 2010, http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/20/devastated_port_au_prince_hospital_struggles.
[24] Stuart Page is chairman of Page Group, http://www.pagegroupltd.com/aboutus.html.
[25] Gardner then explained that, with the police weakened by the quake, 'thousands of escaped criminals have returned to areas they once terrorised, like the slum district of Cité Soleil [...]. Unless the armed criminals are re-arrested, Haiti's security problems risk being every bit as bad as they were in 2004' (BBC Radio 4, Six O'clock News, 18 January 2010). In fact, when some of these ex-prisoners tried to re-establish themselves in Cité Soleil in the week after the quake, local residents promptly chased them out of the district on their own (see Ed Pilkington and Tom Phillips, 'Haiti escaped prisoners chased out of notorious slum', The Guardian 20 January 2010; Tom Leonard, 'Scenes of devastation outside Port-au-Prince "even worse"', Daily Telegraph 21 January 2010).
[26] BBC television, Ten O'clock News, 18 January 2010.
[27] BBC Radio 4, News at Ten, 18 January 2010. It sounds as if Clinton, in his role as UN special envoy to Haiti, may be learning a few things from his deputy – Zanmi Lasante's Dr. Paul Farmer.
[28] David Belle, 17 January 2010.
[29] 'Journalist Kim Ives on How Western Domination Has Undermined Haiti’s Ability to Recover from Natural Devastation', Democracy Now! 21 January 2010, http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/20/journalist_kim_ives_on_how_decades. Ives illustrates the way such community organisations work with an example from the Delmas 33 neighbourhood where he's staying. 'A truckload of food came in in the middle of the night unannounced. It could have been a melee. The local popular organization was contacted. They immediately mobilized their members [...]. They lined up about 600 people who were staying on the soccer field behind the [Matthew 25] house, which is also a hospital, and they distributed the food in an orderly, equitable fashion. They were totally sufficient. They didn’t need Marines. They didn’t need the UN. [...] These are things that people can do for themselves and are doing for themselves.' Kershaw makes the same point: 'This self-imposed blockade by bureaucracy is a scandal but could be easily overcome. The NGOs and the military should recognise the hysteria over "security" for what it is and make use of Haiti's best resource and its most efficient distribution network: the Haitians themselves. Stop treating them as children. Or worse. Hand over to them immediately what they need at the airport. They will find the means to collect it. Fill up their trucks and cars with free fuel. Any further restriction on, and control of, the supply of aid is not only patronising but it is in that control and restriction where any "security issues" will really lurk. And it is the Haitians who best know where the aid is needed' (Andy Kershaw, 'Stop treating these people like savages', The Independent 21 January 2010).
[30] Andy Kershaw, 'Stop treating these people like savages', The Independent 21 January 2010.
[31] Ross Marowits, 'Gildan shifting T-shirt production outside Haiti to ensure adequate supply', The Canadian Press, 13 January 2010, http://www.canadianbusiness.com/markets/headline_news/article.jsp?content=b131693719.
[32] William Booth, 'Haiti's elite spared from much of the devastation', Washington Post 18 January 2010.
[33] Bruno Waterfield, 'US ships blockade coast to thwart exodus to America', Daily Telegraph 19 January 2010; 'Senegal offers land to Haitians', BBC News 17 January 2010, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8463921.stm.(show less)
By 2080, anyone with a direct interest in learning how Dr. David Kelly died, will themselves be dead.That's how an Oxford coroner reacted to a recent ruling ordering the details of the former United Nations weapons inspector's death locked away for 70 years, according to a Mail Online report.Kelly's story, however, was gravely important in 2003, just before he was found dead in the woods behind his home in Oxfordshire, U.K. As the BBC revealed in the wake of his passing, he had been the key source behind a story claiming intelligence on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction was "sexed up."Hours before his death, he reportedly e-mailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller, warning her of "many dark actors playing games," according to the BBC.Lord Hutton, the British judge who led t... (continue)
By 2080, anyone with a direct interest in learning how Dr. David Kelly died, will themselves be dead.That's how an Oxford coroner reacted to a recent ruling ordering the details of the former United Nations weapons inspector's death locked away for 70 years, according to a Mail Online report.Kelly's story, however, was gravely important in 2003, just before he was found dead in the woods behind his home in Oxfordshire, U.K. As the BBC revealed in the wake of his passing, he had been the key source behind a story claiming intelligence on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction was "sexed up."Hours before his death, he reportedly e-mailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller, warning her of "many dark actors playing games," according to the BBC.Lord Hutton, the British judge who led the state's investigation into Kelly's death, also ordered his written records pertaining to the case sealed for 30 years, according to UK's Morning Star Online. Story continues below...The report added that Hutton's inquiry "concluded that Dr Kelly had killed himself by cutting an artery in his wrist. But the finding has been challenged by doctors who claim that the weapons inspector's stated injuries were not serious enough to have killed him."A paramedic who responded to the scene was quoted by The Guardian, saying: "There just wasn't a lot of blood... When somebody cuts an artery, whether accidentally or intentionally, the blood pumps everywhere. I just think it is incredibly unlikely that he died from the wrist wound we saw."The claims eventually led a group of six doctors to bring formal demands for an investigation into Kelly's death. An initial inquiry was headed up by the British Ministry of Defense."[Just] how far were the Blair/Bush administrations willing to go in order to fabricate a reason for the Iraq war?" asked RAW STORY's Investigative News Editor Larisa Alexandrovna in a post to her blog, At Largely. "The Bush administration was at the very least willing to out a covert CIA officer, committing treason in the process. What was Tony Blair willing to do?"Sadly, with the court's inquiry ended, the questions seem doomed to persist.(show less)
70-year gag on Kelly death evidence (Dr. David Kelly) 23 Jan 2010Larisa Alexandrovna Well this latest news won't fuel any conspiracy theories (cough) or bring even more serious questions about the alleged murder (not suicide) of former UN weapons' inspector Dr. David Kelly...
[Want to read the whole piece? Visit atlargely.com for full links, other content, and more]
The Boiling Frogs Presents Andy Worthington
Andy Worthington provides us with an overview of America’s detention center at Guantanamo Bay and the plight of 774 individuals, most of whom are innocent of any terrorism connections. He discusses the general view of the US government and Americans held by many of those released, and the rarity of radicalization or revenge seeking among them. Mr. Worthington talks about the astonishing lack of interest and coverage of these cases and stories by the US media, President Obama’s failure in meeting the release deadline despite his promises during the presidential campaign, the number and current status of inmates released to date…and more.
Andy Worthington is a journalist and historian, based in London. He is the author of The Guantánamo Files... (continue)
The Boiling Frogs Presents Andy Worthington
Andy Worthington provides us with an overview of America’s detention center at Guantanamo Bay and the plight of 774 individuals, most of whom are innocent of any terrorism connections. He discusses the general view of the US government and Americans held by many of those released, and the rarity of radicalization or revenge seeking among them. Mr. Worthington talks about the astonishing lack of interest and coverage of these cases and stories by the US media, President Obama’s failure in meeting the release deadline despite his promises during the presidential campaign, the number and current status of inmates released to date…and more.
Andy Worthington is a journalist and historian, based in London. He is the author of The Guantánamo Files, the first book to tell the stories of all the detainees in Guantanamo Bay, and the co-director of the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantanamo.” You can visit his blog here.
Here is our guest Andy Worthington unplugged!
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McClatchy Newspapers: Although the FBI has acknowledged it improperly obtained thousands of Americans' phone records for years, the Obama administration continues to assert that the bureau can obtain them without any formal legal process or court oversight. The FBI revealed this stance in a newly released report, troubling critics who'd hoped the bureau had been chastened enough by its own abuses to drop such a position.
Carbon trading: A worldwide shell game? 24 Jan 2010Laurie Bennett Carbon trading, according to investigative journalist Mark Schapiro, "is now the fastest-growing commodities market on earth."
The truth of what's happening in Aguan, from the Unified Movement of Peasants of Aguan (MUCA)
The Unitfied Movement of Peasants of Aguan, (MUCA) with the support of peasant organizations, people's organizations and Human Rights organizations, held a press conference on Wednesday January 13th, 2010 in the offices of Vía Campesina in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, where it revealed the persecution and threats to which peasants of the movement have been submitted through many years of the struggle for land. The brotehrs and sisters representing MUCA expressed to the different media the constant violations of their human rights that they have suffered and continue suffering above all with the recent displacement this past January 8th, 2010 because of orders of the supposed owners of thos... (continue)
The truth of what's happening in Aguan, from the Unified Movement of Peasants of Aguan (MUCA)
The Unitfied Movement of Peasants of Aguan, (MUCA) with the support of peasant organizations, people's organizations and Human Rights organizations, held a press conference on Wednesday January 13th, 2010 in the offices of Vía Campesina in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, where it revealed the persecution and threats to which peasants of the movement have been submitted through many years of the struggle for land. The brotehrs and sisters representing MUCA expressed to the different media the constant violations of their human rights that they have suffered and continue suffering above all with the recent displacement this past January 8th, 2010 because of orders of the supposed owners of those lands using military and police authorities of the de facto regime, for the simple act of having reclaimed lands that belong to the movement, as it was exactly in this area, Aguan, where years ago many agrarian cooperatives of peasants were functioning generating income and development in the area. Francisco Fúnez, Director of the National Agrarian Institute in the government of Zelaya expressed that “with the Coup d'Etat in Honduras the conflicts have sharpened in the country and especially in Aguan where the agrarian conflicts for land are ongoing, despite the fact that last year President Zelaya, the peasants, the National Agrarian Institute, and the land owners signed an agreement that said that nobody could dispute the property of those lands without demonstrating the legality of it, nonetheless the displacement continues in that zone and the threat is latent." What follows is the press release put out by the MUCA today in the press conference and Communiqué number 45 of the National Front of Popular Resistance in solidarity with the peasants of Aguan. COMMUNIQUÉ The Unified Peasant Movement fo Aguan (MUCA), arises in 2001 and is made up of 3,500 peasant families. The purpose is the recuperation of a parcel of land for Agrarian Reform, but this right has cost much blood to the peasants who though the years have been at the front of this struggle. Currently 18 peasants of the MUCA are being prosecuted for the crime of usurpation and are receiving persecution and threats. Friday January 8th, 2010 the following peasant groups: the Agropecuaria 21 de Julio Cooperative, the Empresa Asociativa de Campesinos 9 de Diciembre, the Empresa Asociativa de Campesinos el Despertar, Empresa Asociativa de Campesinos San Esteban and others located in the left bank of the Aguan river, who are members of MUCA, were violently displaced by elements of the police, the military, security guards of the landholder René Morales dressed in military uniforms, causing grave physical and psychological damages to many peasants who were in the area. Because of this: 1- MUCA demands of the Honduran State and the National Agrarian Institute the immediate adjudication of the lands of the peasants of Aguan, since the acquisition of them by Miguel Facusé, René Morales and Reinaldo Canales was illegal, because article 106 of the Law of Agrarian Reform establishes that the cooperatives have the prohibition of selling or transferring the totality or part of the adjudicated lands except with previous authorization of the National Agrarian Institute and this entity never authorized the sale of these lands. 2- There exists an agreement among President Zelaya and these peasant groups of Aguan signed at the beginning of the month of June, 2009 before the coup d'etat, in which was agreed that a technical juridical commission would investigate the legality of the tending of these lands and the supposed owners Miguel Facusé, René Morales and Reinaldo Canales would be paid for the improvements they had made; but the lands would be given to the peasants of MUCA. 3- We demand Exigimos of the Attorney General, the Judge of Tocoa and other entities involved in this matter to abstain from executing violent displacements of the Unified Movement of Aguan (MUCA), since the agrarian question is the responsibility of the State through the National Agrarian Institute and not of the army and the police, especially not when there is an agreement signed by the government with the peasant groups of this zone.
4- We demand that while the investigation has not ended regarding tenancy of this land by the INA, all types of displacement be halted, as well as the persecution and threats against members of the Unified Peasant Movement of Aguan (MUCA). 5- We hold responsible the prosecutor of Tocoa Adoris Molina Reyes and the judge Suyapa Karina Basha Pinel, the supposed property owners, the Armed Forces and the de facto authorities for all acts of violence that could occur, as tomorrow, January 14th, 2010 there is another displacement of sisters and brothers who have kept their position in the lands on the bank of the River Aguan. 6- We make a call to the national and international community and especially to the social and people's organizations of Honduras as well as the Human Rights defense organizations to stand in solidarity with our struggle. Tegucigalpa, Honduras January 13th, 2010 Signed: Unified Peasant Movement of Aguan (MUCA) Vía Campesina in Honduras National Central of Rural Workers (CNTC) Coordinating Council of Peasant Organizations of Honduras (COCOCH) National Front of Popular Resistance (FNRP) Fian Internacional, Human Rights defense organization(show less)
Aristide demanded that France pay Haiti over 21 billion U.S. dollars...equivalent to the 90 million gold francs Haiti was forced to pay Paris after winning its freedom from France 200 years ago. The massive toll France exacted on Haiti played a large part in the Caribbean country's descent into stark poverty and under-development.
The Founders were deeply skeptical of corporations, by Michael Giberson: ...
I ... want to pass along a
useful bit of historical observation from Streetwise Professor:
Stevens noted that the Founders were deeply skeptical of corporations. Indeed
so. Scalia noted that there are so many corporations them today. Also true.
The interesting question is how we got from A (Stevens) to B (Scalia).The story
is told in the North, Wallis and Weingast natural state book Violence and
Social Orders I’ve blogged about several times, mostly in the context of
Russia. The relevant chapter is primarily based on John Wallis’s work. The
basic story is that hostility to corporations–reflected very well in Adam
Smith’s Wealth of Nations–was due to the fact that historicall... (continue)
Michael Gilberson:
The Founders were deeply skeptical of corporations, by Michael Giberson: ...
I ... want to pass along a
useful bit of historical observation from Streetwise Professor:
Stevens noted that the Founders were deeply skeptical of corporations. Indeed
so. Scalia noted that there are so many corporations them today. Also true.
The interesting question is how we got from A (Stevens) to B (Scalia).The story
is told in the North, Wallis and Weingast natural state book Violence and
Social Orders I’ve blogged about several times, mostly in the context of
Russia. The relevant chapter is primarily based on John Wallis’s work. The
basic story is that hostility to corporations–reflected very well in Adam
Smith’s Wealth of Nations–was due to the fact that historically,
English corporations were created by the crown, and were essentially very
profitable favors provided to the politically connected. They were, in NWW
terms, part of the “closed order” of the natural state, in which access to
certain contracting forms was limited to a select powerful few. This animus
towards corporations was inherited in the United States, but in the early years
of the 19th century, state legislatures confronting issues associated with the
financing of new infrastructure turned the corporate form into a prop of an open
order system in which this contracting form was made available to all. Rather
than limit the right of incorporation to an elite, they made it available to
everybody. The system changed from one in which legislatures had to grant every
incorporation, to one in which pretty much anybody could incorporate if they met
a set of general, universally applicable requirements. Hence, the proliferation
of corporations.
Thus, Stevens was historically right, but his inference was wrong. The kind of
corporation that Adam Smith and the Founders detested was a quite different from
the modern corporation that developed in the 19th century. The name was the
same, but the entire conceptual and legal basis for corporations old and new
were completely different. Indeed, almost inversions of one another. Indeed,
the transformation of the corporation from a creation of the closed order to an
essential element of the emerging open order explains the empirical phenomenon
that Scalia cited.
Anyone who saw the Robert Greenwald documentary Iraq For Sale: The War Profiteers will know that this story about DynCorp in the Wall Street Journal is only the tip of the iceberg in corporate looting of the United States Treasury (meaning taxes paid in by Americans):
The U.S. State Department is struggling with its accounting for billions of dollars spent on police-training contracts in Iraq with DynCorp International Inc.
A report from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, to be released today, says that squaring away just how the money was spent may take years.
The State Department lacks adequate staff in Iraq to closely monitor the work, its biggest contract there, according to the report. DynCorp invoices were regularly found to have errors and often lacked suffici... (continue)
Anyone who saw the Robert Greenwald documentary Iraq For Sale: The War Profiteers will know that this story about DynCorp in the Wall Street Journal is only the tip of the iceberg in corporate looting of the United States Treasury (meaning taxes paid in by Americans):
The U.S. State Department is struggling with its accounting for billions of dollars spent on police-training contracts in Iraq with DynCorp International Inc.
A report from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, to be released today, says that squaring away just how the money was spent may take years.
The State Department lacks adequate staff in Iraq to closely monitor the work, its biggest contract there, according to the report. DynCorp invoices were regularly found to have errors and often lacked sufficient documentation, the auditors found. “As a result, over $2.5 billion in U.S. funds are vulnerable to waste and fraud,” the report said. Auditors examining three major DynCorp work orders concluded that money is being misspent on a variety of things, including unneeded security guards and property leases, and duplicate equipment, such as generators.
DynCorp, of Falls Church, Va., is one of the State Department’s main contractors overseas. Though smaller than major defense firm, DynCorp plays a frontline role in U.S. foreign policy and has been involved in a range of operations from coca eradication programs in Colombia to United Nations peacekeeping in Sudan. It is also currently training local forces in Afghanistan.
Other big defense companies are targeting the overall training market, including Raytheon Co., L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. and Northrop Grumman Corp…
Today its my very real pleasure to publish my interview with Carlo who, since our "meeting" in August 08, became a regular commentator on this blog. Carlo is extremely well-informed about the situation in Latin America (his other specialty is Russia) and I asked him to agree to a Q&A about the current developments on this continent. It is hard to overstate the importance of Latin America in the worldwide struggle against the USraelien Empire and recently the liberation struggle has been faced with numerous ominous developments. Now is a perfect time to make a survey of the "Latin American Union" with an expert like Carlo to whom I am deeply grateful for his time and expertise.The Saker ------- The Saker: Carlo - lots of things have been happening in Latin America. The USA successfully ... (continue)
Today its my very real pleasure to publish my interview with Carlo who, since our "meeting" in August 08, became a regular commentator on this blog. Carlo is extremely well-informed about the situation in Latin America (his other specialty is Russia) and I asked him to agree to a Q&A about the current developments on this continent. It is hard to overstate the importance of Latin America in the worldwide struggle against the USraelien Empire and recently the liberation struggle has been faced with numerous ominous developments. Now is a perfect time to make a survey of the "Latin American Union" with an expert like Carlo to whom I am deeply grateful for his time and expertise.The Saker ------- The Saker: Carlo - lots of things have been happening in Latin America. The USA successfully overthrew President Zelaya of Honduras, Evo Morales was brilliantly won the General Election in Bolivia, but in Chile a multi-billionaire right wing president, Sebastian Piñera, won the presidential elections with 51.6% of the vote. The US recreated the 4th Fleet under SOUTHCOM, Colombia allowed the US to open a series of military bases and Venezuela reported regular airspace violations by US military aircraft from Colombia (a de-facto US colony) and the Dutch Antilles (a de-jure and de-facto Dutch/NATO colony). Venezuela is engaged in a major arms purchase program (from Russia) while at the same time the oil prices are putting Venezuela in a difficult economic situation. The earthquake in Haiti made it possible for the USA to essentially occupy the small country and make darn sure that the devastation would not be a pretext for the return of the legitimate President. What do you make of all these, and other, developments in Latin America? What is your assessment of the "State of the Continent", so to speak.
Carlo: Well, you already made an excellent summary of the most important events in Latin America in the last years. The region has made important progress in the last 10 years, but we should notice that the "golden years" are gone. These lasted from 2002, when the US became completely involved in Afghanistan and began preparing the war against Iraq, til 2008, when the 4th Fleet was reactivated, and it meant that South American countries could do mostly what they wanted without fearing a US intervention. Now there are more risks when implementing independent policies in the region, but I think Chavez, Morales and Correa don't fear these risks anyway.
Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean are different cases, and the US kept intervening there even during the height of the "War on Terror". I think it is extremely likely that the US participated in the coup against Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004 (he was forced to board a US plane with US military personnel) and a possible manipulation of Mexican presidential elections in 2006, when a leftist candidate almost won.
The Saker: Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador seem to be forming in informal alliance of Latin American countries which clearly reject US imperialism and who want to built a new economic model. How are, in your opinion, these countries doing, how successful have they been.
Carlo: Politically, very successfully. They have a very good image throughout the world (except perhaps Cuba), even though there are many attacks from the US corporate media, and this makes unlikely a direct military attack against them. They also managed to decrease poverty and income differences (which are huge in most of the continent), and create better health and education systems - Venezuela was the second country in the region, after Cuba, to eradicate illiteracy. But there may be problems ahead. The main economical and political engine of this alliance was surely Venezuela, fuelled by very high oil prices. But now that these have decreased drastically, inflation and deficit budget are increasing in Venezuela, and this may affect Chavez's government in the parliamentary elections that will happen this year. Chavez made the big mistake of not diversifying his country's economy, which only exports oil and imports most of the industrialized products and even a great part of the food it consumes. In 2005 a program to settle unemployed urban workers in the countryside was implemented, but it will probably take some time to bring results. Anyway, despite the problems, Chavez's popularity is still very high, so probably he won't suffer very bad results in the elections.
The Saker: In contrast, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay have followed a "sort of but not really" kind of progressive course, in which the rhetoric is definitely Left-leaning, but the actual policies are not. What kind of result has that brought these governments and how do you assess their future prospects?
Carlo: You could have included Chile in the list also, at least until Piñera assumes. First, let's talk a bit about Mercosur. This was originally conceived in the 1980's as a free trade area between Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay, but its role has grown, and now it has a parliament, very easy transit of people (it is not even needed a passport to travel between these countries), an increased number of associate members (Chile, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela, the last is to become a full member as soon as Paraguay approves its membership), and plans to create a common currency. Mercosur did a lot to integrate these countries, but has its share of problems, mostly the commercial disagreements between the two biggest and most industrialized members, Brazil and Argentina. Uruguay and Paraguay have less diversified economies and sometimes feel their interests are overshadowed by the biggest members, so many times they turn to the US to have an alternative market for their agricultural products. The same happens with Chile, which is mostly an exporter of raw materials: this country has been ruled by the moderate left since Pinochet left power in 1990, but remained an important political and comercial partner of the US.
Brazil and Argentina are very unique countries. In Brazil, the rightists have a very strong hold in Brazilian mass communication (mostly Globo, one of the biggest mass-media corporation in the world), and they usually support the US economical and political agenda. On the other hand, Brazil has a very diversified economy, it exports many industrialized products, like automobiles, electronics and aircrafts, and is undoubtedly the leader in South America, having by far the biggest territory, population and economy. And the political leaders, even though not left-leaning, usually pursue a more independent foreign policy. This was true for previous presidents, like centrists José Sarney (1985-1990) and Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2003). And the independent policy got stronger (though not as much as in Venezuela and Bolivia) with Lula, the current president since 2003, who is extremely popular, and has always been at odds with the mass media.
Argentina was the most industrialized country in the region until the 1970's, but is perhaps the only country in which a de-industrialization program was conceived and applied on purpose (Russia and other former Soviet countries were largely de-industrialized in the 1990's, but it wasn't done so much on purpose, it was mostly due to the ill-conceived "reforms"), in two phases: first during the military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1976 to 1983, and then during the hard-right presidency of Carlos Menem, from 1989 to 1999. The rightists are not so strong in this country because people felt directly the consequences of a very pro-US politics and monetarist economics, which ruined the country and caused most of the industries to close, creating huge unemployment and a sharp decrease in living standards (which, til the 1970's, were much higher than any other South American country).
The presidency of the Kirchners (first Nestor, from 2003 to 2007, and since then his wife Cristina) have been a contradictory and deceiving government. After the complete collapse of the country in 2001, Nestor Kirchner assumed in 2003 and had a quite successful presidency, restoring the economy and partially re-industrializing the country. Also, ties with Venezuela and Bolivia have increased, and some anti-US rhetorics have appeared. But Argentina kept close ties with Israel (even adhering to the US and Israelian version of the attack against the AMIA Jewish center, which was bombed in 1994, blaming Iran and Hezbollah for it). But the Kirchners have a very apathetic foreign policy, differently from Brazil and Venezuela, which are constantly seeking new allies and partners to diminish the influence of the US and Europe in the region. Cristina Kirchner last week canceled an official visit to China, because of conflicts with her vice-president. And after some years of high growth and some decrease of poverty, the economy has been deteriorating again, with high inflation, stagnation and a new rise of poverty and income differences. There has been no interest in fighting inflation, instead what the government has been doing since 2007 is interfering in the main statistical institute, trying to hide the true economical data. And with shrinking popularity, it is very probably that they won't remain in power after 2011, when there will be new presidential elections, but it is still impossible to know what will happen then. Nestor and Cristina Kirchner are probably the biggest disappointment in the region: the country seemed to be in the right path from 2003 til 2006, but since then they became more arrogant, distant from the population, made billionaire agreements with business which showed loyalty to them, and their personal fortune increased 7-fold in just one year (2008). Lula, though not as independent and progressive as Chavez, and also with some corruption scandals, at least managed to increase considerably the economy, decrease poverty to some extent, and specially strengthened Brazilian influence in the world.
The Saker: Mexico, Peru, Colombia and now, Honduras are clearly under US control and have pretty much cast their lots with the US Empire. Do you believe that these countries are now indeed firmly under US imperial control or do they still have the potential to free themselves?
Carlo: Mexico has a US ally in the presidency, Felipe Calderón, thanks to very controversial elections in 2006. And Honduras went under US control through a coup against former president Zelaya, who was a close ally of Chavez. So these two countries could have a possibility of freeing themselves, though proximity with the US make this much harder than in South America. Colombia, on the other hand, has a very rightist president who was elected through legitimate elections, and who is also very popular. But Alvaro Uribe, the Colombian president, is surely the biggest threat: using "anti-terrorist" rhetorics (against the FARC guerrilla which controls a great part of Colombian territory) he even attacked Ecuadorian territory in 2007, to kill some FARC leaders who were there for negotiations to have Ecuador as a mediator in the Colombian conflict. Uribe also uses very strong rhetorics against Chavez, accusing him of supporting the "terrorists", and there are fears that a war between both countries may appear.
The Saker: How would you assess the role and importance of the OAS, in particular in comparison with ALBA and how would you assess the current status and potential of ALBA?
Carlo: The OAS is, nowadays, quite useless. The entire region opposes the US embargo against Cuba (even Canada criticizes it), nevertheless it continues to exist and there seems no possibility that it will end anytime soon (unless there is a sudden regime change in that country). There was a consensus in the OAS in the 60's and 70's, when Latin America was entirely ruled by the right, mainly by military dictators. But since democracy has returned to the region in te 80's, there is no consensus at all in the OAS. About ALBA: it is an interesting political, strategical and economical proposal. Its members are Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Cuba, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica and Saint Vincent and Granadines. It appeared as an alternative against the US-led Free Trade Area of the Americas (which, by the way, will hardly be implemented entirely, except by some countries which signed bilateral agreements with the US, like Colombia). But ALBA is still only beginning, and Mercosur is a much more consolidated agreement and includes the two biggest economies in South America, Brazil and Argentina.
The Saker: It is clear that the Latin American continent is becoming polarized and there is a lot of talk about the risk for military conflicts. How likely do you think that such conflicts really are? In particular, what do you make of the US moves of recreating the 4th Fleet and opening bases in Colombia? Do you think that a major US intervention is being prepared and, if yes, against what country? Venezuela?
Carlo: The US didn't care for South America for quite some years, when they dedicated mostly to Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, and a lot of independent movements popped in the entire region. Even Mexico almost elected a leftist president in 2006, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Having realized this, the US is now coming back, for sure, with an increased military presence in the region. Hugo Chavez and even Fidel Castro had hopes that Obama would improve ties with their countries, the most "rebel" ones. But, as all other hopes people used to have for Obama, this one has also vanished completely. Anyway, I think a direct intervention of the US in the region, specially a military attack, is very unlikely, as it would be hugely unpopular in the entire world. But destabilization, economical wars, manipulation of elections and "revolutions for democracy" (similar to the Ukrainian and Georgian cases) are very real possibilities, and some of them may even be realities (for example, manipulation of the 2006 presidential elections in Mexico).
There are risks of a military conflict between the country with the most independent policy in South America, Venezuela, and the biggest ally of the US in the region, Colombia - two countries which, by an irony of fate, are neighbors. But I think the risk is small. The populations of both countries would be strongly against a war, and don't want any conflict. Also, I think a war between them wouldn't be good for the US, either. The last war that happened in South America was a brief border conflict in a remote jungle area between Peru and Ecuador in 1995, which lasted one month, and in 1998 both countries signed a treaty solving the territorial disputes between them.
The Saker: More generally, we can say that what is going on nowadays in Latin America is a struggle between the White, colonial, plutocracy and the native, indigenous popular movements. I am not much of a Marxist, but find that a class analysis of the politics in Latin America makes a great deal of sense. Do you agree with this view and, if yes, what do you see as the likely outcome of this 21 century "class struggle"?
Carlo: What you affirm mostly applies to Bolivia, and in a smaller degree to Argentina and Chile, where there is a division between European descendants, who belonged to the higher classes, and poorer Indian descendants. With Morales as president, Bolivia has made a great progress to integrate the Indian descendants, and now the country is officially called The Multinational State of Bolivia, with 36 native languages recognized as official, together with Spanish. But in Brazil, for example, there has been a lot of miscegenation, though usually the division was between European and African (brought as slaves) descendants. But I would say you are right in the aspect that Latin America is polarized between very poor populations, with no access to quality education and health care, minimal infrastructure and low qualification jobs, if not unemployed and going into crime, and, on the other hand, rich and medium classes who have lifestyles very similar to Western Europeans and North Americans. Latin America is not so much a poor region, it has a reasonable decree of economical development, even high in some countries (Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay), but the greatest tragedy in this region is the extremely unfair division of wealth and unequal access to education and health services. ------- Carlo Moiana, 32, is Brazilian and has been living in Argentina since 2005. He contributed voluntarily to the Portuguese-version of the online newspaper Pravda.ru from 2003 til 2008, and since this year has been a follower of the Vineyard of the Saker blog (which he discovered during the South Ossetian war).
Among the casualties of President Barack Obama's healthcare agenda may be those who suffer from pre-existing medical conditions and can't get insurance.Thought the ban on denying health insurance coverage for pre-existing conditions was going the way of the dodo? Not so fast.An astute blogger noted that the new proposals floated by Democrats in the wake of the massive health care bill's collapse is a provision that would bar denying coverage for those with pre-existing conditions -- but only if they were under 19. "Did someone just chuck pre-existing conditions overboard?" he wrote.Among the measures Democrats are considering, the New York Times noted Friday, "Insurers could not deny coverage to children under the age of 19 on account of pre-existing medical conditions.""The only reason... (continue)
Among the casualties of President Barack Obama's healthcare agenda may be those who suffer from pre-existing medical conditions and can't get insurance.Thought the ban on denying health insurance coverage for pre-existing conditions was going the way of the dodo? Not so fast.An astute blogger noted that the new proposals floated by Democrats in the wake of the massive health care bill's collapse is a provision that would bar denying coverage for those with pre-existing conditions -- but only if they were under 19. "Did someone just chuck pre-existing conditions overboard?" he wrote.Among the measures Democrats are considering, the New York Times noted Friday, "Insurers could not deny coverage to children under the age of 19 on account of pre-existing medical conditions.""The only reason to specify that children under the age of 19 won't be denied coverage is because you plan on letting everyone 19 and over BE denied coverage for pre-existing conditions," blogger John Aravosis replied. Story continues below...The liberal blogger also discovered a carefully worded description of what may be Obama's health care fallback plan in an editorial penned for the Washington Post on Sunday by former Obama campaign manager Dan Plouffe."If we do pass it, dozens of protections and benefits take effect this year," Plouffe wrote. "Parents won't have to worry their children will be denied coverage just because they have a preexisting condition. Workers won't have to worry that their coverage will be dropped because they get sick. Seniors will feel relief from prescription costs. Only if the plan becomes law will the American people see that all the scary things Sarah Palin and others have predicted -- such as the so-called death panels -- were baseless."Aravosis notes that Plouffe has again highlighted plans to jettison pre-existing conditions -- but only for children."Their children?" he wrote. "The original promise - even the bad Senate bill - protects everyone, of any age, from being denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions. Now it's just children?"Democrats haven't firmly coalesced around any plan, so details remain up in the air. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-CA) office did not immediately return a request for comment from Raw Story.If the Democrats were to back away from a fullscale ban on pre-existing conditions, liberals are sure to question President Barack Obama, who included a ban at the top of his change.gov website's health care agenda prior to taking office."Require insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions so all Americans regardless of their health status or history can get comprehensive benefits at fair and stable premiums," the then-president-elect's website said.The challenge for Democrats: a ban on denying coverage for those with pre-existing conditions went hand-in-hand with a requirement that all Americans carry insurance. Insurance companies conceded that they would accept all patients, regardless of health history, but only if everyone was required to have insurance, which would spread the cost of insuring the sick across a wider pool. Without an insurance mandate, a pre-existing ban would mean that premiums would almost certainly rise.Liberal critics of the Senate Democratic healthcare bill -- which now appears dead -- argued that even with a pre-existing ban, a provision that allowed insurance companies to charge older patients three times as much as younger consumers effectively undermined attempts to level the insurance playing field.ThinkProgress, the blog of the progressive Center for American Progress, notes that insurers spent at least $38 million in lobbying on the health care bill in 2009.(show less)
New FCC commish challenges minority groups on net neutrality 25 Jan 2010ars@lasarletter.net (Matthew Lasar)
The Federal Communications Commission's newest Democrat, Mignon Clyburn, had some interesting comments to make about net neutrality on Friday at the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council's Social Justice summit. They came as the rush to stop the FCC from implementing its proposed Internet non-discrimination rules is in full force. And leading the charge are groups that, ironically, say they're opposed to discrimination, among them the MMTC.
It's so Cold, there can't be Global Warming 17 Jan 2010greenman3610
It's so Cold, there can't be Global Warming
We've heard a lot of talk lately from deniers that cold temperatures are proof that there is no such thing as global waming. It looks like it will be an annual event for me to remind people that winter still follows summer. Since deniers seem to want to believe the warming thing is all a lie, perhaps a little review is in order. This is a re-upload, to address sound issues and spelling mistakes. www.columbia.edu www.skepticalscience.com www.skepticalscience.com www.ncdc.noaa.gov www.ncdc ...
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In 2006, President Bush famously said in his State of the Union:
Keeping America competitive requires affordable energy. And here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world. The best way to break this addiction is through technology….
By applying the talent and technology of America, this country can dramatically improve our environment, move beyond a petroleum-based economy, and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past.
On the solution side, Bush was mainly following the advice of GOP spinmeister Frank Luntz on how to pretend you are interested in solving our energy problems without actually doing anything (see Bush follows Luntz playbook: “Technology, technology, blah, blah, blah”).
But... (continue)
In 2006, President Bush famously said in his State of the Union:
Keeping America competitive requires affordable energy. And here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world. The best way to break this addiction is through technology….
By applying the talent and technology of America, this country can dramatically improve our environment, move beyond a petroleum-based economy, and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past.
On the solution side, Bush was mainly following the advice of GOP spinmeister Frank Luntz on how to pretend you are interested in solving our energy problems without actually doing anything (see Bush follows Luntz playbook: “Technology, technology, blah, blah, blah”).
But the news that night was how the former Texas oilman bluntly stated both the problem, our addiction to oil, and the ultimate goal, to “move beyond a petroleum-based economy.”
Now along comes FoxNews contributor Sarah Palin, who has devised the perfect way to put forward for her backward energy policy — Facebook. That way she can avoid any substance, avoid those pesky questions from reporters, and not bother to spend even two seconds editing her posts so she doesn’t utter blather like this:
Where’s the Oil in Our National Energy Policy?
Yesterday at 3:41pm
America’s energy challenges are getting more and more serious every day, and yet the Obama administration just doesn’t get it. Please see this informative article that sheds light on one aspect of the president’s problem. It starts by explaining our energy demand will increase, and oil will be part of that demand.
Well, what do you know? The Obama administration, whose entire energy posture going back into the presidential campaign has been both ideologically and practically stridently anti-oil, both as an industry and as a form of energy, has suddenly become “concerned” about China’s oil grab.
This is, to say the least, disingenuous.
The U.S. government under Barack Obama has yet to acknowledge once, in spite of widely held estimates, that oil will continue to account for 40% of world energy demand 25 years from now — this while total world energy demand will increase by 50%, at least.
Read the rest here. I look forward to hopefully hearing President Obama acknowledge America’s need to ramp up domestic energy production, including oil and natural gas developments, during Wednesday’s State of the Union address. Let’s hope his advisers advise him accordingly.
- Sarah Palin
This is unmitigated nonsense.
The piece Palin quotes, from uber-right-wing Investors Business Daily is outraged that Energy Secretary Chu said, “We must move beyond oil.” Yet that is precisely what President Bush said, “move beyond a petroleum-based economy.” This is, to say the least, disingenuous.
As for what Obama actually supports, let’s just go back to December (see “Graham says Obama has his back on climate bill“):
Sen. Lindsey Graham may be under fire from conservatives back home in South Carolina. But the Republican got a personal assurance from President Obama yesterday that the White House is supporting his efforts to craft a sweeping Senate energy and global warming bill.
“The president told me personally he was very open, that nuclear power would be part of the mix, that clean coal would be part of the mix, that he’s for offshore drilling in a responsible way,” Graham said today in describing his Oval Office meeting with Obama. “But we have to have a price on carbon, an emissions standard that’s real, that’s good for the environment and good for business. And I was very pleased.”
Palin seems to have no advisers advising her, else her advising advisors would have hopefully and accordingly told her that President Obama campaigned on a strategy of expanding domestic resources while aggressively pushing clean energy and greenhouse gas reductions.
I reported back in August 2008 on the Obama-Biden energy plan (”Breaking news — A real energy plan for America: Efficiency now, 10% renewables by 2012, and one million plug-in hybrids by 2015“). Here’s what it says about domestic energy:
Promote the Supply of Domestic Energy
With 3 percent of the world’s oil reserves, the U.S. cannot drill its way to energy security. But U.S. oil and gas production plays an important role in our domestic economy and remains critical to prevent global energy prices from climbing even higher. There are several key opportunities to support increased U.S. production of oil and gas that do not require opening up currently protected areas.
• A “Use it or Lose It” Approach to Existing Leases. Oil companies have access to 68 million acres of land, over 40 million offshore, which they are not drilling on. Drilling in open areas could significantly increase domestic oil and gas production. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will require oil companies to diligently develop these leases or turn them over so that another company can develop them.
• Promote the Responsible Domestic Production of Oil and Natural Gas. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will set up a process for early identification of any infrastructure obstacles/shortages or possible federal permitting process delays to drilling in:
o Bakken Shale in Montana and North Dakota which could have as much as 4 billion recoverable barrels of oil according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
o Unconventional natural gas supplies in the Barnett Shale formation in Texas and the Fayetteville Shale in Arkansas.
o National Petroleum Reserve‐Alaska (NPR‐A) which comprises 23.5 million acres of federal land set aside by President Harding to secure the nation’s petroleum reserves for national
security purposes.
• Prioritize the Construction of the Alaska Natural Gas Pipeline.
• Getting More from our Existing Oil Fields. [from enhanced oil recovery (EOR)]
Of course, Palin is so practiced at repeating falsehoods — even in her supposed area of expertise (energy) — that during last year’s presidential campaign, the Washington Post itself gave her its highest (which is to say lowest) rating of “Four Pinocchios” for continuing to “to peddle bogus [energy] statistics three days after the original error was pointed out by independent fact-checkers.”
I’m not sure what is scarier — Palin trying to participate in the discussion over energy policy with nonsensical posts like this one or conservative thought leader Newt Gingrich calling her a conservative leader on energy issues.
Related Posts:
Terminator of Endearment: Schwarzenegger slams Palin’s global warming stance — take her “with a grain of salt.”
Washington Post goes tabloid, publishes second falsehood-filled op-ed by Palin in five months
Palin’s “Going Rogue” spreads falsehoods about bipartisan clean energy legislation(show less)
Secretary Clinton's speech last week on Internet Freedom was an important step in bringing online free expression and privacy to the forefront of the United States' foreign policy agenda.
But for all the strong language, it was also a speech of caveats: powerful statements like "we stand for a single internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas" sat close to hedges about the dangers of anonymous speech, and how it might be used to distribute "stolen intellectual property". Clinton expressed concern at those who "violate the privacy of citizens who engage in non-violent political speech", but she also spoke of "redoubl[ing] efforts" similar to the Convention on Cybercrime, a document which provides scant protections for the privacy of anyone being investigated b... (continue)
Secretary Clinton's speech last week on Internet Freedom was an important step in bringing online free expression and privacy to the forefront of the United States' foreign policy agenda.
But for all the strong language, it was also a speech of caveats: powerful statements like "we stand for a single internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas" sat close to hedges about the dangers of anonymous speech, and how it might be used to distribute "stolen intellectual property". Clinton expressed concern at those who "violate the privacy of citizens who engage in non-violent political speech", but she also spoke of "redoubl[ing] efforts" similar to the Convention on Cybercrime, a document which provides scant protections for the privacy of anyone being investigated by a foreign government.
Enacting policy has a way of clarifying these ambiguities, for good or ill. Many of the projects that the State Department says it will encourage and fund, including systems to allow whistleblowers to expose corruption, and permit citizens fighting drug-related violence in Mexico to make "make untracked reports to reliable sources to avoid having retribution visited against them", require a strong anonymous infrastructure. The State Department's work will depend on anonymity, so we hope it will defend it. The US government could also take a diplomatic lead in requiring high standards for evidence and due process in international cybersecurity treaties, and we hope they will.
Perhaps the most significant shift in the State Department's attitude, however, concerned its attitude to domestic companies and their relationship with repressive architecture abroad.
Censorship should not be in any way accepted by any company from anywhere. And in America, American companies need to make a principled stand. This needs to be part of our national brand. I'm confident that consumers worldwide will reward companies that follow those principles.
Now, we are reinvigorating the Global Internet Freedom Task Force as a forum for addressing threats to internet freedom around the world, and we are urging U.S. media companies to take a proactive role in challenging foreign governments' demands for censorship and surveillance. The private sector has a shared responsibility to help safeguard free expression. And when their business dealings threaten to undermine this freedom, they need to consider what's right, not simply what's a quick profit.
Secretary Clinton has put her stamp of approval on voluntary initiatives to help global companies create global standards of privacy and free expression that are consistent with international human rights documents. She cites the work of the Global Network Initiative, an organization that includes companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! and human rights groups like EFF, Human Rights Watch, and the Committee to Protect Journalists.
But Secretary Clinton went even further here. She specifically included a proactive role in challenging illegitimate government demands for "surveillance". This is important and should be the start of a broader conversation inside and outside the government. Because in the case of both filtering and spying on the Net, the risk is not only from companies that comply with illegitimate requests: it is from companies that actively profit from those authoritarian government's demands.
Secretary Clinton's call for a public-private partnership in building tools to support Internet freedom should include a call for attention, and action to stop another set of troubling public-private partnerships: between authoritarian governments and private companies willing to build their Great Firewalls and dragnet surveillance systems for them. If Internet freedom really is part of America's national brand, we could start by alerting consumers of not only the victims of Internet censorship and control, but those who help build the technology that enables it.(show less)
TheWrap 'Tillman' Delivers a Particular Brand of American Outrage TheWrap A methodically structured account of the military cover-up surrounding the overseas death of former football player Pat Tillman in 2002, it delivers a ...
Scott Horton draws tellingly on Auden and Homer in this follow-up to his remarkable piece, "The Guantanamo 'Suicides'," the story of three captives – all of them innocent men, cleared for later release – who were almost certainly murdered in a secret site in the American concentration camp in 2006, apparently for protesting prison conditions. (We examined Horton's story here.)
The men were evidently killed during "strenuous interrogation" -- i.e., they had rags stuffed down their throat while being beaten. When they died, a ludicrous story of a mutual suicide pact -- under impossible physical conditions -- was concocted by American authorities, complete with outright lies about the men being "hardcore" terrorists who killed themselves as an act of "asymmetrical warfare." The cover-up of... (continue)
Scott Horton draws tellingly on Auden and Homer in this follow-up to his remarkable piece, "The Guantanamo 'Suicides'," the story of three captives – all of them innocent men, cleared for later release – who were almost certainly murdered in a secret site in the American concentration camp in 2006, apparently for protesting prison conditions. (We examined Horton's story here.)
The men were evidently killed during "strenuous interrogation" -- i.e., they had rags stuffed down their throat while being beaten. When they died, a ludicrous story of a mutual suicide pact -- under impossible physical conditions -- was concocted by American authorities, complete with outright lies about the men being "hardcore" terrorists who killed themselves as an act of "asymmetrical warfare." The cover-up of these killings goes up to the highest levels of the U.S. government – and it continues most forcefully to this day under the Obama Administration. It is a sickening -- but most instructive -- story.
In his latest piece, Horton notes:
The three men who died in Guantánamo on the night of June 9, 2006 certainly had failings and foibles as all men do; no one will portray them as angels. To its credit, the Bush Administration even seems to have determined to set two of them free; the third had only to await resolution of diplomatic problems between the United States and his homeland. These men were not warriors engaged in some vicious military campaign against the United States, nor was there a scintilla of evidence linking them to any crime. “They were small/ And could not hope for help and no help came,” Auden writes. And what was the reaction of the world to their plight? Auden describes it perfectly, and indeed it was only to be expected: “A crowd of ordinary decent folk/ Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke.” The only difference here is the sentries, who at great risk to themselves and their families have stepped forward to place on the record exactly what they saw. They know it defies the official story; they know they may suffer retribution for it; and they know that what they saw is not conclusive in any event. It is only a fragment of the truth, which needs to be put forward and made a part of the historical record. It was offered out of respect for the dignity of the dead and out of conviction that the truth should not be suppressed, no matter how unpleasant. In the corridors of power, however, a river surges past, indifferent to all these questions, viewing them as an insignificant distraction from the troubles of a war.
Auden’s poem is a work of beauty and power. It has prophetic vision, but that vision is a nightmare. It is born from the horrors of World War II. The barbed wire of concentration camps and death camps brings the Homeric epoch up to date. Auden is not portraying the tragedies of the last war as such. He is warning of a world to come in which totalitarian societies dominate and the worth and dignity of the individual human being are lost. He warns those who stand by, decent though they may seemingly be, and say nothing–perhaps because political calculus or the chimera of national glory have blinded them to the greater moral imperatives against homicide, torture and the dissemination of lies in the cause of war.
You should read the whole piece -- and keep it constantly in mind when wading through all the earnest, endless disquisitions about the weighty affairs and political fortunes of our great and good, all of them written as if these people, our leaders, our bipartisan elites, are somehow normal, as if they are not brutally depraved and indifferent to the point of moral insanity. (show less)
Stand with the people of
Haiti! What the U.S. government isn't telling
you
We at the ANSWER Coalition extend our heartfelt solidarity to
all of our Haitian sisters and brothers, as well as to all those who have friends and
family there, as Haiti copes with the destruction and grief of the massive 7.0 magnitude
earthquake that struck yesterday.
All of us are joining in the
outpouring of solidarity from people all over the hemisphere and world who are sending
humanitarian aid and assistance to the people of Haiti.
At such a
moment, it is also important to put this catastrophe into a political and social
context. Without this context, it is... (continue)
Stand with the people of
Haiti! What the U.S. government isn't telling
you
We at the ANSWER Coalition extend our heartfelt solidarity to
all of our Haitian sisters and brothers, as well as to all those who have friends and
family there, as Haiti copes with the destruction and grief of the massive 7.0 magnitude
earthquake that struck yesterday.
All of us are joining in the
outpouring of solidarity from people all over the hemisphere and world who are sending
humanitarian aid and assistance to the people of Haiti.
At such a
moment, it is also important to put this catastrophe into a political and social
context. Without this context, it is impossible to understand both the monumental
problems facing Haiti and, most importantly, the solutions that can allow Haiti to
survive and thrive. Hillary Clinton said today, "It is biblical, the tragedy
that continues to daunt Haiti and the Haitian people." This hypocritical
statement that blames Haiti's suffering exclusively on an "act of
God" masks the role of U.S. and French imperialism in the
region.
In this statement, we have included some background
information about Haiti that helps establish the real
context:
Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive stated today that
as many as 100,000 Haitians may be dead. International media is reporting bodies being
piled along streets surrounded by the rubble from thousands of collapsed buildings.
Estimates of the economic damage are in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Haiti’s
large shantytown population was particularly hard hit by the tragedy.
As CNN, ABC and every other major corporate media outlet will be
quick to point out, Haiti is the poorest country in the entire Western hemisphere. But
not a single word is uttered as to why Haiti is poor. Poverty, unlike earthquakes, is no
natural disaster.
The answer lies in more than two centuries of U.S.
hostility to the island nation, whose hard-won independence from the French was only the
beginning of its struggle for liberation.
In 1804, what had begun as
a slave uprising more than a decade earlier culminated in freedom from the grips of
French colonialism, making Haiti the first Latin American colony to win its independence
and the world's first Black republic. Prior to the victory of the Haitian
people, George Washington and then-Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson had supported
France out of fear that Haiti would inspire uprisings among the U.S. slave population.
The U.S. slave-owning aristocracy was horrified at Haiti’s newly earned freedom.
U.S. interference became an integral part of Haitian history,
culminating in a direct military occupation from 1915 to 1934. Through economic and
military intervention, Haiti was subjugated as U.S. capital developed a railroad and
acquired plantations. In a gesture of colonial arrogance, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was
the assistant secretary of the Navy at the time, drafted a constitution for Haiti which,
among other things, allowed foreigners to own land. U.S. officials would later find an
accommodation with the dictator François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, and then his son
Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, as Haiti suffered under their brutal repressive
policies.
In the 1980s and 1990s, U.S. policy toward Haiti sought
the reorganization of the Haitian economy to better serve the interests of foreign
capital. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) was instrumental in
shifting Haitian agriculture away from grain production, paving the way for dependence
on food imports. Ruined Haitian farmers flocked to the cities in search of a livelihood,
resulting in the swelling of the precarious shantytowns found in Port-au-Prince and
other urban centers.
Who has benefited from these policies? U.S.
food producers profited from increased exports to Haitian markets. Foreign corporations
that had set up shop in Haitian cities benefitted from the super-exploitation of cheap
labor flowing from the countryside. But for the people of Haiti, there was only greater
misery and destitution.
Washington orchestrated the overthrow of the
democratically elected Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide—not once, but twice, in
1991 and 2004. Haiti has been under a U.S.-backed U.N. occupation for nearly six years.
Aristide did not earn the animosity of U.S. leaders for his moderate reforms; he earned
it when he garnered support among Haiti's poor, which crystallized into a mass
popular movement. Two hundred years on, U.S. officials are still horrified by the
prospect of a truly independent Haiti.
The unstable, makeshift
dwellings imposed upon Haitians by Washington’s neoliberal policies have now, for many,
been turned into graves. Those same policies are to blame for the lack of hospitals,
ambulances, fire trucks, rescue equipment, food and medicine. The blow dealt by such a
natural disaster to an economy made so fragile from decades of plundering will greatly
magnify the suffering of the Haitian people.
Natural disasters are
inevitable, but resource allocation and planning can play a decisive role in mitigating
their impact and dealing with the aftermath. Haiti and neighboring Cuba, who are no
strangers to violent tropical storms, were both hit hard in 2008 by a series of
hurricanes—which, unlike earthquakes, are predictable. While more than 800 lives were
lost in Haiti, less than 10 people died in Cuba. Unlike Haiti, Cuba had a coordinated
evacuation plan and post-hurricane rescue efforts that were centrally planned by the
Cuban government. This was only possible because Cuban society is not organized
according to the needs of foreign capital, but rather according to the needs of the
Cuban people.
In a televised speech earlier today, President Obama
has announced that USAID and the Departments of State and Defense will be working to
support the rescue and relief efforts in Haiti in the coming days. Ironically, these are
the same government entities responsible for the implementation of the economic and
military policies that reduced Haiti to ruins even before the earthquake
hit.
The ANSWER Coalition has called for a mass
national march and rally in Washington, D.C., on March 20 to oppose the wars and
occupations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine. We will also demand an end the foreign
occupation of Haiti and reparations to Haiti for the vast wealth that has been looted
from the country by foreign imperialist
countries.
Help build the March 20
March on Washington!
Endorse March
20
Organize
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Naomi Klein Issues Haiti Disaster Capitalism Alert: Stop Them Before They
Shock Again 14 Jan 2010mail@democracynow.org (Democracy Now!) Journalist and author Naomi
Klein spoke in New York last night and addressed the crisis in Haiti: “We have to be
absolutely clear that this tragedy—which is part natural, part unnatural—must, under no
circumstances, be used to, one, further indebt Haiti and, two, to push through unpopular
corporatist policies in the interest of our corporations. This is not conspiracy theory.
They have done it again and again.” [includes rush transcript]
US Policy in Haiti Over Decades "Lays the Foundation for Why Impact of
Natural Disaster Is So Severe" 14 Jan 2010mail@democracynow.org (Democracy Now!) We discuss the situation in
Haiti following Tuesday’s massive earthquake, as well as the history of Haiti, with two
guests who have spent a lot of time there: Bill Quigley, the legal director at the
Center for Constitutional Rights, and Brian Concannon, director of the Institute for
Justice & Democracy in Haiti. [includes rush transcript]
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After Downing Street is a nonpartisan coalition working to expose the lies that create and sustain wars and occupations and to hold accountable those responsible. We have speakers available. If you register on this site, you will have the option to receive occasional Email updates from us. Please read our policy regarding posting comments on this site. Would you like to see ADS news every time you go to Google.com? Use this widget or this widget to put ADS news on any website. We're on Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter, and have an RSS feed.
What Obama Reads: Andrew Sullivan, New Yorker, Economist, Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone 26 Jan 2010Chip What Obama Reads: Andrew Sullivan, New Yorker, Economist, Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone | Huffington Post
A Washington Post look at the first year of the Obama administration includes details on what's in the President's media diet.
The Post's Anne E. Kornblut and Michael A. Fletcher report that Obama is "the first truly wired president, the first to have Internet access at his desk and to converse regularly via e-mail." As such, he often consumes news online and, they report, "looks for offbeat blogs and news stories, tracking down firsthand reporting and seeking out writers with opinions about his policies." Read more.
read more
Grayson: Fight now or ‘kiss your country goodbye’ to Exxon, Wal-Mart
By Sahil Kapur | Raw Story
Inaction will create 'Congressman from Wal-Mart'
Responding to the Supreme Court's ruling Thursday to overturn corporate spending limits in federal elections, progressive firebrand Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) immediately highlighted a series of moves to "avoid the terrible consequences of the decision."
"If we do nothing then I think you can kiss your country goodbye," Grayson told Raw Story in an interview just hours after the decision was announced.
"You won't have any more senators from Kansas or Oregon, you'll have senators from Cheekies and Exxon. Maybe we'll have to wear corporate logos like Nascar drivers."
Grayson said the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling -- which re... (continue)
Grayson: Fight now or ‘kiss your country goodbye’ to Exxon, Wal-Mart
By Sahil Kapur | Raw Story
Inaction will create 'Congressman from Wal-Mart'
Responding to the Supreme Court's ruling Thursday to overturn corporate spending limits in federal elections, progressive firebrand Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) immediately highlighted a series of moves to "avoid the terrible consequences of the decision."
"If we do nothing then I think you can kiss your country goodbye," Grayson told Raw Story in an interview just hours after the decision was announced.
"You won't have any more senators from Kansas or Oregon, you'll have senators from Cheekies and Exxon. Maybe we'll have to wear corporate logos like Nascar drivers."
Grayson said the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling -- which removes decades of campaign spending limits on corporations -- "opens the floodgates for the purchases and sale of the law." Read more.
read more(show less)
GRAYSON: "SAVE OUR DEMOCRACY" | Press Release
(Washington, DC) – Congressman Alan Grayson (FL-8) has introduced legislation to prevent a corporate takeover of government in America. His “Save Our Democracy” Reform Package (H.R. 4431-4435) aims to stave off the threat of "corpocracy" arising from the U.S. Supreme Court decision.
“The Supreme Court in essence has ruled that corporations can buy elections. If that happens, democracy in America is over. We cannot put the law up for sale, and award government to the highest bidder.” Congressman Grayson said.
Here are the bills that Congressman Grayson has introduced, and what they aim to accomplish:
1) The Business Should Mind Its Own Business Act (H.R. 4431): Implements a 500% excise tax on corporate contributions to political commit... (continue)
GRAYSON: "SAVE OUR DEMOCRACY" | Press Release
(Washington, DC) – Congressman Alan Grayson (FL-8) has introduced legislation to prevent a corporate takeover of government in America. His “Save Our Democracy” Reform Package (H.R. 4431-4435) aims to stave off the threat of "corpocracy" arising from the U.S. Supreme Court decision.
“The Supreme Court in essence has ruled that corporations can buy elections. If that happens, democracy in America is over. We cannot put the law up for sale, and award government to the highest bidder.” Congressman Grayson said.
Here are the bills that Congressman Grayson has introduced, and what they aim to accomplish:
1) The Business Should Mind Its Own Business Act (H.R. 4431): Implements a 500% excise tax on corporate contributions to political committees, and on corporate expenditures on political advocacy campaigns.
read more(show less)
Statement from Doris “Granny D” Haddock in response to the Supreme Court’s decision to kill campaign finance reform
Ten years ago, I walked from California to Washington, D.C. to help gather support for campaign finance reform. I used the novelty of my age (I was 90), to garner attention to the fact that our democracy, for which so many people have given their lives, is being subverted to the needs of wealthy interests, and that we must do something about it. I talked to thousands of people and gave hundreds of speeches and interviews, and, in every section of the nation, I was deeply moved by how heartsick Americans are by the current state of our politics.
Well, we got some reform bills passed, but things seem worse now than ever. Our good government reform groups are trying to st... (continue)
Statement from Doris “Granny D” Haddock in response to the Supreme Court’s decision to kill campaign finance reform
Ten years ago, I walked from California to Washington, D.C. to help gather support for campaign finance reform. I used the novelty of my age (I was 90), to garner attention to the fact that our democracy, for which so many people have given their lives, is being subverted to the needs of wealthy interests, and that we must do something about it. I talked to thousands of people and gave hundreds of speeches and interviews, and, in every section of the nation, I was deeply moved by how heartsick Americans are by the current state of our politics.
Well, we got some reform bills passed, but things seem worse now than ever. Our good government reform groups are trying to staunch the flow of special-interest money into our political campaigns, but they are mostly whistling in a wind that has become a gale force of corrupting cash. Conditions are so bad that people now assume that nothing useful can pass Congress due to the vote-buying power of powerful financial interests. The health care reform debacle is but the most recent example.
The Supreme Court, representing a radical fringe that does not share the despair of the grand majority of Americans, has today made things considerably worse by undoing the modest reforms I walked for and went to jail for, and that tens of thousands of other Americans fought very hard to see enacted. So now, thanks to this Court, corporations can fund their candidates without limits and they can run mudslinging campaigns against everyone else, right up to and including election day.
The Supreme Court now opens the floodgates to usher in a new tsunami of corporate money into politics. If we are to retain our democracy, we must go a new direction until a more reasonable Supreme Court is in place. I would propose a one-two punch of the following nature:
read more(show less)
Appeal to Stop Navy Base Construction on Jeju Island, South Korea 26 Jan 2010Chip APPEAL TO STOP NAVY BASE CONSTRUCTION ON JEJU ISLAND, SOUTH KOREA
We, the undersigned global organizations and individuals, call upon the South Korean and US governments to cancel all plans to build a Navy base on Jeju Island. The base will destroy coral reefs that have been listed as world heritage environmental sites by the UNESCO and will destroy the fishing and way of life of the people.
The deployment of naval Aegis destroyers, outfitted with missile defense systems, will be used to surround and provoke China and will make Jeju Island a prime target.
Jeju is called the peace island and must remain free of provocative military bases.
Click "Read more" to see supporters.
read more
Haiti and China: A Tale of Two Earthquakes
By Austin Ramzy | Yahoo! News | Submitted by Michael Munk | www.MichaelMunk.com
Looking for parallels to Haiti's catastrophe, many point to China. In May 2008, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck the southwestern province of Sichuan, pancaking schoolhouses, buildings and homes and killing at least 68,000 people. But the ferocity of the tremor and a huge death toll may be the only parallels between the two quake-stricken nations.
I went back to Sichuan six months after the catastrophe and was amazed at the speed of physical and economic recovery. In Dujiangyan, the largest city in the quake zone, the rubble and the tent cities had disappeared. The jumble of debris was replaced by piles of new bricks, lumber and other construction materials. There ... (continue)
Haiti and China: A Tale of Two Earthquakes
By Austin Ramzy | Yahoo! News | Submitted by Michael Munk | www.MichaelMunk.com
Looking for parallels to Haiti's catastrophe, many point to China. In May 2008, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck the southwestern province of Sichuan, pancaking schoolhouses, buildings and homes and killing at least 68,000 people. But the ferocity of the tremor and a huge death toll may be the only parallels between the two quake-stricken nations.
I went back to Sichuan six months after the catastrophe and was amazed at the speed of physical and economic recovery. In Dujiangyan, the largest city in the quake zone, the rubble and the tent cities had disappeared. The jumble of debris was replaced by piles of new bricks, lumber and other construction materials. There was a building boom across the region, and dozens of temporary villages were erected to house the five million people rendered homeless by the quake. The prefab housing was made out of blue aluminum siding lined with styrofoam insulation. They had cement floors and were arranged in neat rows in flat spots at the bases of the mountains. Conditions weren't luxurious, but the camps were clean and the housing dry and fairly warm. Read more.
read more(show less)
Aid workers ‘being pushed out’ of Palestinian areas
By James Hider | Times Online
Israel has stopped issuing work permits to foreign aid workers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, sparking fears about the future of relief operations in the Palestinian territories.
The Israeli Interior Ministry has issued only tourist visas to aid groups such as Oxfam, Médecins sans Frontières and Save the Children since before Christmas. They say that their legal situation is now precarious and that some staff have been denied entry by Israeli border officials who also control all entry to the West Bank.
The move came amid pressure from right-wing Israeli groups to crack down on non-governmental organisations, which are often seen as having a political, anti-Israeli bias. Early last year an Israeli gr... (continue)
Aid workers ‘being pushed out’ of Palestinian areas
By James Hider | Times Online
Israel has stopped issuing work permits to foreign aid workers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, sparking fears about the future of relief operations in the Palestinian territories.
The Israeli Interior Ministry has issued only tourist visas to aid groups such as Oxfam, Médecins sans Frontières and Save the Children since before Christmas. They say that their legal situation is now precarious and that some staff have been denied entry by Israeli border officials who also control all entry to the West Bank.
The move came amid pressure from right-wing Israeli groups to crack down on non-governmental organisations, which are often seen as having a political, anti-Israeli bias. Early last year an Israeli group, NGO monitor, forced the New York-based Human Rights Watch to suspend a weapons specialist who had written a scathing report on Israel’s use of white phosphorus during its Gaza offensive. The group tracked down anonymous comments that the researcher had made on online discussions for collectors of Nazi memorabilia.
Some left-wing Israeli groups have accused Israel of “declaring war” on foreign groups such as Human Rights Watch and Oxfam, which have been critical of Israel’s blockade of Gaza.
Aid groups are now worried that the decision by the Interior Ministry could inhibit their work to provide medical support, welfare and basic supplies to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Read more.
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FBI 'fabricated terror emergencies to get phone records'
Justice department to accuse FBI of invoking crises to obtain details of more than 2,000 calls, Washington Post reports
By Chris McGreal | Guardian.co.UK
Caproni said that FBI's issuing of authorisations after the fact was a "good-hearted but not well thought-out" move to give the phone companies legal cover for handing over the records....The FBI subsequently issued a blanket authorisation covering all past searches, although its legality was questioned. The Washington Post said journalists on the newspaper and the New York Times were among those whose phone records were illegally searched. The FBI later apologised to editors of both papers.
The US justice department is preparing a report which concludes that the FBI repeatedly b... (continue)
FBI 'fabricated terror emergencies to get phone records'
Justice department to accuse FBI of invoking crises to obtain details of more than 2,000 calls, Washington Post reports
By Chris McGreal | Guardian.co.UK
Caproni said that FBI's issuing of authorisations after the fact was a "good-hearted but not well thought-out" move to give the phone companies legal cover for handing over the records....The FBI subsequently issued a blanket authorisation covering all past searches, although its legality was questioned. The Washington Post said journalists on the newspaper and the New York Times were among those whose phone records were illegally searched. The FBI later apologised to editors of both papers.
The US justice department is preparing a report which concludes that the FBI repeatedly broke the law by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist to obtain more than 2,000 telephone call records over four years from 2002, including those of journalists on US newspapers, according to emails obtained by the Washington Post.
The bureau also issued authorisations for the seizure of records after the fact, in order to justify unwarranted seizures.
The Washington Post said the emails show how counter-terrorism officials inside FBI headquarters breached regulations designed to protect civil liberties.
The FBI's general counsel, Valerie Caproni, told the Washington Post that the agency violated privacy laws by inventing non-existent terrorist threats to justify collecting the phone records. "We should have stopped those requests from being made that way," she said.
Caproni said that FBI's issuing of authorisations after the fact was a "good-hearted but not well thought-out" move to give the phone companies legal cover for handing over the records. Read more.
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Gaza blockade threatens health of 1.4 million, aid agencies warn
Israeli and Egyptian blockade means nearly one-fifth of requests to leave for treatment are refused or delayed, report says
By James Sturcke | Guardian.co.UK
The health of 1.4 million people is being put at risk by the ongoing Israeli and Egyptian blockade of Gaza, a report by more than 80 humanitarian organisations warned today.
The aid groups, including the World Health Organisation and UN agencies, said more than one-fifth of sick Palestinians who needed to leave the territory for treatment in Israel had either been refused or had their applications delayed. The groups called on Israel and Egypt to open the border crossings with Gaza.
Max Gaylard, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator for the Palestinian territories, said th... (continue)
Gaza blockade threatens health of 1.4 million, aid agencies warn
Israeli and Egyptian blockade means nearly one-fifth of requests to leave for treatment are refused or delayed, report says
By James Sturcke | Guardian.co.UK
The health of 1.4 million people is being put at risk by the ongoing Israeli and Egyptian blockade of Gaza, a report by more than 80 humanitarian organisations warned today.
The aid groups, including the World Health Organisation and UN agencies, said more than one-fifth of sick Palestinians who needed to leave the territory for treatment in Israel had either been refused or had their applications delayed. The groups called on Israel and Egypt to open the border crossings with Gaza.
Max Gaylard, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator for the Palestinian territories, said the blockade undermined the local healthcare system and put lives at risk.
"It is causing ongoing deterioration in the social, economic and environmental determinants of health," he said.
"It is hampering the provision of medical supplies and the training of health staff, and it is preventing patients with serious medical conditions from getting timely specialised treatment."
The agencies highlighted the case of a student, Fidaa Hijji, who died of cancer while waiting for Israeli permission to go to hospital for a bone marrow operation. Read more.
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SCOTUS Evicerates Finance Regulations: What To Do About It | Unbossed
Excerpt: "To my mind, however, the first step is pretty obvious. Congress should prohibit any corporation from engaging in this new political spending if it has any non-American shareholders or owners. Because after all, foreigners have no 1st Amendment protections.
The “logic” behind the SCOTUS ruling is that a corporation composed of individuals ought to possess the legal attributes of its individual owners. Thus the same logic ought to require that partial foreign ownership renders the corporation a foreign body at least in part. The foreign parts of a corporation have no constitutional right to free speech. And since there is no practical way to distinguish the legal rights of the parts from the rights of the whol... (continue)
SCOTUS Evicerates Finance Regulations: What To Do About It | Unbossed
Excerpt: "To my mind, however, the first step is pretty obvious. Congress should prohibit any corporation from engaging in this new political spending if it has any non-American shareholders or owners. Because after all, foreigners have no 1st Amendment protections.
The “logic” behind the SCOTUS ruling is that a corporation composed of individuals ought to possess the legal attributes of its individual owners. Thus the same logic ought to require that partial foreign ownership renders the corporation a foreign body at least in part. The foreign parts of a corporation have no constitutional right to free speech. And since there is no practical way to distinguish the legal rights of the parts from the rights of the whole corporation (that presumption underpins the SCOTUS ruling), then it’s impossible to give American constitutional rights to part of a corporation but withhold them from another part.
Hence it is constitutionally permissible to deny a partly foreign-owned corporation from spending on political speech within the United States. Congress should act to do so immediately.
Why make this a priority? There can’t be many large corporations that are entirely owned by American persons." Read more.
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Here’s a report that the only TV studio available to Al Jazeera English to do satellite feeds from New Hampshire– WMUR in Manchester– has arbitrarily rescinded the Arab network’s access to the station. I’m told that WMUR is the only broadcast affiliate in NH, and the one that presidential candidates live and die by every 4 years. Media Nation:
Last week WMUR-TV (Channel 9) in Manchester, N.H., apparently shut off access to Al Jazeera, which [reporter Deborah] Arnesen had used to broadcast several segments. According to the Concord Monitor, Arnesen had been scheduled to appear on Al-Jazeera to discuss President Obama’s outreach to women and minorities. Instead, she had to do it by phone.
The Monitor reports that WMUR has not responded to requests for comment. But Sarah Alansary, a produ... (continue)
Here’s a report that the only TV studio available to Al Jazeera English to do satellite feeds from New Hampshire– WMUR in Manchester– has arbitrarily rescinded the Arab network’s access to the station. I’m told that WMUR is the only broadcast affiliate in NH, and the one that presidential candidates live and die by every 4 years. Media Nation:
Last week WMUR-TV (Channel 9) in Manchester, N.H., apparently shut off access to Al Jazeera, which [reporter Deborah] Arnesen had used to broadcast several segments. According to the Concord Monitor, Arnesen had been scheduled to appear on Al-Jazeera to discuss President Obama’s outreach to women and minorities. Instead, she had to do it by phone.
The Monitor reports that WMUR has not responded to requests for comment. But Sarah Alansary, a producer for Al Jazeera, is quoted as saying the station sent a message cutting off access:
They sent an e-mail telling them sorry, the studio’s no longer booked for you. We don’t wish to do business with your organization. I don’t know what’s the reason.
…“Every candidate on the planet who thinks of running for president is coming here,” Arnesen tells the Monitor. “Don’t you want the Middle East to know what’s going on? What message are they sending by shutting them off?”
Related posts:Annals of self-censorshipSelf-censorship on this websiteUltra-Zionism seems to foster Islamophobia
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To its journalistic credit, Electronic Intifada has confirmed a tip that many of us got over the last few days, that Ethan Bronner’s son has joined the Israeli Defense Forces. Bronner is of course the Jerusalem bureau chief for the New York Times (and did not respond to my inquiry to him on the issue).
EI nailed the story with an email from Susan Chira of the Times: "Ethan Bronner referred your query to me, the foreign editor. Here is my comment: Mr. Bronner’s son is a young adult who makes his own decisions. At The Times, we have found Mr. Bronner’s coverage to be scrupulously fair and we are confident that will continue to be the case."
I don’t know that this is a tenable line. I think this could be a sore point for Bronner, who’s already a sore point… People are going to harp on it; ... (continue)
To its journalistic credit, Electronic Intifada has confirmed a tip that many of us got over the last few days, that Ethan Bronner’s son has joined the Israeli Defense Forces. Bronner is of course the Jerusalem bureau chief for the New York Times (and did not respond to my inquiry to him on the issue).
EI nailed the story with an email from Susan Chira of the Times: "Ethan Bronner referred your query to me, the foreign editor. Here is my comment: Mr. Bronner’s son is a young adult who makes his own decisions. At The Times, we have found Mr. Bronner’s coverage to be scrupulously fair and we are confident that will continue to be the case."
I don’t know that this is a tenable line. I think this could be a sore point for Bronner, who’s already a sore point… People are going to harp on it; EI regards it as a "conflict of interest." And Ethan Bronner is the burning bush of hasbara. Also, I’ve heard that Bronner’s annoyed by criticism; I wonder if this is going to keep him up at night. I have to think the Columbia Journalism Review or some other keeper of the ethical flames is going to examine the question.
Don’t expect Bronner to write about it. He should; it’s a good story. But he won’t. We don’t talk about Jewish identity and militarism in the NYT.
The larger issue here is of course Zionism in the mainstream media, how deep does it go, and will anyone ever look into it? And on from that, Why are so many of the MSM reporters on Israel/Palestine Jews with intimate ties to Israel? Bronner is married to an Israeli and has a son in the most moral military in the world. The other Times person, Isabel Kershner, is "thoroughly Israeli," per the Jewish Forward, and married to an Israeli. The new Washington Post reporter, Janine Zacharia, is a Jewish woman from Long Island (I’m told) who once went over there to work for the Jerusalem Post. Wolf Blitzer worked for AIPAC and the JPost. Jeffrey Goldberg was in the IDF too.
It’s like a credential.
Tribe means something: Almost all Arab-Americans I’ve met come out of a political culture that hates the occupation, hates the confiscation of land by Israel, hates the siege of Gaza, and all in all doesn’t especially care for Israel. Aren’t those legitimate American opinions? When do some of those folks get to cover this story?
Related posts:I passed along a false report re Ethan BronnerThis is Ethan Bronner’s chance to seize the Friedman laurelsMearsheimer on the Times’ Ethan Bronner
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The Israeli government is starting to go all out in its war against the Goldstone Report. Israel is planning on issuing its response to the report this Thursday, and it seems Israel is aided by the fact that so few people have actually read the contents of the report itself. We will be posting segments from the report to make them more accessible to the public (you can find the entire report here). Hopefully the better the report is known, the better Israel will be held accountable.
The following story is found of pages 281-287 of the report. I have removed the footnotes from the text, but you can find them in the original.
The case of Majdi Abd Rabbo
Majdi Abd Rabbo outside the remains of his house. (Photo: Dion Nissenbaum/MCT)
To investigate this case, the Mission visited Izbat Abd... (continue)
The Israeli government is starting to go all out in its war against the Goldstone Report. Israel is planning on issuing its response to the report this Thursday, and it seems Israel is aided by the fact that so few people have actually read the contents of the report itself. We will be posting segments from the report to make them more accessible to the public (you can find the entire report here). Hopefully the better the report is known, the better Israel will be held accountable.
The following story is found of pages 281-287 of the report. I have removed the footnotes from the text, but you can find them in the original.
The case of Majdi Abd Rabbo
Majdi Abd Rabbo outside the remains of his house. (Photo: Dion Nissenbaum/MCT)
To investigate this case, the Mission visited Izbat Abd Rabbo. The Mission interviewed Mr. Majdi Abd Rabbo and several of his neighbours.It also obtained two sworn statements Majdi Abd Rabbo had given to two NGOs. Majdi Abd Rabbo, a man aged 39 at the time of the incident, is married and the father of five children aged between 16 years and 14 months. He is an intelligence officer of the Palestinian Authority. He lived with his family in a house on the main street of Izbat Abd Rabbo, al-Quds Street, which in this section is commonly known as Izbat Abd Rabbo Street. His family house stood next to Salah ad-Din mosque. The home of the family of Khalid and Kawthar Abd Rabbo (see chap. XI) is less than 500 metres east of the Majdi Abd Rabbo family home.
Majdi Abd Rabbo recounted that, at around 9.30 a.m. on 5 January 2009, he heard loud banging on the outer door of the house. He asked who was at the door and someone responded in Arabic, ordering him to open the door. He opened the door and saw in front of him a handcuffed Palestinian man, whom he later found out to be HS/07, aged 20. A group of around 15 Israeli soldiers stood behind HS/07. One of the soldiers was holding a weapon to HS/07’s head. The soldiers pushed HS/07 to one side and four soldiers pointed their weapons at Majdi Abd Rabbo.They ordered him to undress down to his underwear. He was then told to dress again and they pushed him into the house.
The soldiers ordered him to call his children one by one. He started with his eldest son, aged 16, who was ordered by the soldiers to strip naked. The same process was followed with the two other sons, aged nine and eight. He then called his daughter, aged 14, who was told to press her clothes to her body and turn around. His wife, who was holding their baby daughter, was also told to press her clothes to her body, and then to take the baby’s trousers off.
Abd Rabbo standing in the rubble of his home. (Photo: The Independent)
Majdi Abd Rabbo stated that the soldiers then forced him to walk in front of them as they searched the house, room by room, holding a firearm to his head. They questioned him about the house behind his. He told them that the house was empty and the owner, HS/08, had been absent for four years working in the Sudan. There was a small gap between the two houses, but they were joined at the roof. The soldiers gave him a sledgehammer, the kind used to break stones, and told him to break a hole through the dividing wall into HS/08’s house. This took around 15 minutes.
From the roof, the soldiers entered HS/08’s house, pushing Majdi Abd Rabbo ahead of them down the stairs while they watched over his shoulders. They had descended only a few steps, however, when the soldiers apparently detected some movement in the house, started shouting, pulled Majdi Abd Rabbo back and rushed back into his house over the roof. Majdi Abd Rabbo heard some gun shots.
The soldiers ran out into the street, forcing Majdi Abd Rabbo and HS/07 with them while they were shooting. Both were taken into the adjacent mosque, where there were a large number of soldiers with military equipment. They were forced to sit down and then handcuffed.
The soldiers used the raised area of the mosque, from where the imam leads prayers, to fire at Majdi Abd Rabbo’s house and the houses next to it. He shouted at the soldiers to stop, as his family was still in the house. A soldier told him to shut up or they would shoot him. The shooting continued for around 30 minutes. After a lull, the soldiers warned that there would be a huge explosion and, indeed, about three minutes later there was a huge explosion. The explosion was followed by intensive gunfire and artillery shells. Majdi Abd Rabbo could not identify the source of the explosion.
In the meantime, he had been forced to break a hole in the wall of the mosque on the south side and into the neighbouring house. He had then been interrogated about his knowledge of Hamas and the location of tunnels. Subsequently, he was taken and detained together with a group of neighbours, men and women, in another house in the neighbourhood (the HS/09 family home).
When the shooting stopped, soldiers came to fetch him. He was taken to the road next to his house, to an empty area behind HS/08’s house. He saw that HS/08’s house and the entrance area of his house had been damaged. There were numerous soldiers standing next to the house, including some officers. He saw a senior officer talking to the soldiers who raided his house, and the officer then came to speak to him, through an Arabic-speaking soldier. The soldier said that they had killed the fighters inside the house and told him to go into the house and come back with their clothes and weapons. He protested, saying that he just wanted to find out if his family was safe. The officer told him to obey their orders if he wanted to see his family again. He refused to go, and was kicked and beaten by soldiers with their weapons until he gave in.
He approached HS/08’s house from the street. The entrance was destroyed and blocked by rubble. He went back to the officer and told him that he could not get in. The officer told him to go through the roof instead. He went into his own house, which he found empty, except for a soldier. This reinforced his anxiety about the fate of his family. At this point, there was no major damage to his house. He crossed the roof and went down the stairs into HS/08’s house. He was scared that the fighters would shoot at him and shouted, “I am a Palestinian, a neighbour. I am being forced to come into this house.” In a room at the bottom of the stairs he found three armed young men wearing military camouflage and headbands of al-Qassam Brigades. They pointed their weapons at him. He told them that the Israeli soldiers thought that they had been killed and had sent him to check. He said that he was helpless as the soldiers had taken his wife and children. The armed men told him that they had seen everything, and asked him to go back to the soldiers and tell them what he had seen.
He went back outside, again crossing over the roof of his house. As he approached the soldiers, they pointed their weapons at him and ordered him to stop, strip naked and turn around. After he dressed again, he told them what he had seen. Initially, the soldiers did not believe him. They asked how he knew that they were Hamas militants and he explained about their headbands. The soldiers asked about their weapons. He replied that they were carrying Kalashnikovs. The officer told him that, if he was lying, he would be shot dead.
He was handcuffed and taken back to the HS/09 family house for detention. At around 3 p.m., he heard gunfire for around 30 minutes. The soldiers came back for him and took him to the same officer. This time he noticed different soldiers present with different military equipment. Through the translator, the officer told him that they had killed the militants, and told him to go in and bring back their bodies. Again he refused, saying “this is not my job, I don’t want to die.” He lied to them, saying that the three militants had told him that if he came back, they would kill him. The officer told him that, as they had already killed the militants, he should not worry. He added that they had fired two missiles into the house, which must have killed the militants. When he still resisted, he was beaten and kicked again, until he went into HS/08’s house via the roof again.
He found the house very badly damaged. The bottom part of the stairs was missing. He again went in shouting, to alert the militants if they were still alive. He found them in the same room as before. Two were unharmed. The third was badly injured, covered in blood, with wounds to his shoulder and abdomen. They asked him what was going on outside and he told them that the area was fully occupied and the soldiers had taken numerous hostages, including his family.
The wounded man gave him his name (HS/10) and asked him to tell his family what had happened. Majdi Abd Rabbo promised to do so if he survived and later did so. Another of the three told him to tell the Israeli officer that, if he was a real man, he would come to them himself.
Majdi Abd Rabbo returned to the soldiers, who again forced him to strip naked before they approached him. He told the officer that two of the militants were unharmed. The officer swore at him and accused him of lying. Majdi Abd Rabbo then repeated the message from the militant, at which the officer and four other soldiers assaulted him with their weapons and insulted him.
The officer asked Majdi Abd Rabbo for his identity card. He replied that it was in his house but gave him the ID card number. The officer checked the number via an electronic device. Three minutes later the officer asked him if it was true that he worked with the head of Palestinian Authority’s intelligence services, which he confirmed. The officer asked him if he was with Abu Mazen and a Fatah affiliate. He said he was.
The soldiers brought Majdi Abd Rabbo a megaphone and told him to use it to call the militants. He initially refused but did so under threat. As instructed, he told the militants to surrender, that ICRC was present and they could hand themselves over. There was no response.
By then, night had fallen. Majdi Abd Rabbo was again handcuffed and taken back to the house of the HS/09 family. Thirty to forty minutes later, he heard shooting and a huge explosion. Soldiers came to tell him that they had bombed HS/08’s house and ordered him to go in again and check on the fighters.
The Israeli armed forces had floodlit the area. Majdi Abd Rabbo found both his and HS/08’s house very badly damaged. He could not use the roof of his house to enter HS/08’s house, as it had collapsed. He went back to the soldiers, who again made him strip, this time to his underwear. He asked where his family was and said that he could not reach the fighters because of the damage to the houses. He accused the soldiers of destroying his house. The officer said that they had only hit HS/08’s house. Majdi Abd Rabbo was then handcuffed. Until this time, he had been given no food or water, and it was very cold. After a while, his handcuffs were removed, he was told to dress and taken back to the HS/09 family house, to the room where he found that other people were being held. All the men and boys in this room were handcuffed and their ankles were tied. A soldier came with some drinking glasses and smashed them at the entrance to the room where they were being held. After smashing the glasses, he left again. Majdi Abd Rabbo had developed a severe headache. Another detainee, who spoke Hebrew, called a soldier to say that Majdi Abd Rabbo was sick and needed medicine. The soldier told him to keep quiet or he would be shot. A woman tied a scarf around Majdi Abd Rabbo’s head to ease the pain.
At around 7 a.m., Majdi Abd Rabbo was taken back to the soldiers outside. He was questioned about the number of fighters in the house. He confirmed that he had seen only three.
Two young Palestinian men from the neighbourhood were brought over. A soldier gave them a camera and told them to go into the house and take photos of the fighters. The two tried to refuse, and were beaten and kicked. The soldier showed them how to use the camera and they went into HS/08’s house through the damaged main entrance. About 10 minutes later, they came back with photos of the three fighters. Two appeared to be dead, under rubble. The third was also trapped by rubble but appeared to be alive and was still holding his firearm. A soldier showed Majdi Abd Rabbo the photos and asked if these were the same people. He confirmed they were.
A soldier took the megaphone and told the fighters that they had 15 minutes to surrender, that the neighbourhood was under the control of the Israeli armed forces and that, if they did not surrender, they would hit the house with an air strike.
Fifteen minutes later, a soldier came with a dog, which had electronic gear attached to its body and what looked like a camera on its head. Another soldier had a small laptop. The dog handler sent the dog into the house. A few minutes later, shots were heard and the dog came running out. It had been shot and subsequently died.
At around 10.30 a.m. on 6 January 2009, a bulldozer arrived and started to level the house. The bulldozer moved from east to west, demolishing everything in its way. Majdi Abd Rabbo watched it demolish his own house and HS/08’s house. He and the two young men were told to go back to the HS/09 house. They heard shooting.
At around 3 p.m., he was taken back close to the site of his and HS/08’s house. He told the Mission that he saw the bodies of the three fighters lying on the ground in the rubble of the house.
The soldiers then forced him to enter other houses on the street as they searched them. All the houses were empty. The soldiers forced him to go into the house alone initially and, when he came out, sent in a dog to search the house. During the house searches he managed to find some water to drink, the first drink he had had for two days. At midnight, the soldiers took him back to the HS/09 family house.
On 7 January, all the men and boys were taken from the HS/09 family house and transferred to the house of a cousin of Majdi Abd Rabbo’s in the same neighbourhood. There were more than 100 men and boys, including members of his extended family, aged between 15 and 70. The women were being held elsewhere. Majdi Abd Rabbo’s immediate family members were not there, and he learnt that no one had seen them. He remained extremely anxious about their safety.
At around 11 p.m., the men and boys in that house were told that they were going to be released, and that they should all walk west towards Jabaliyah, without turning left or right, on threat of being shot. They found Izbat Abd Rabbo Street severely damaged. Majdi Abd Rabbo went to his sister’s house in Jabaliyah, where he was reunited with his wife and children on 9 January 2009. His wife then told him that they had stayed for some hours in the house, during the first shooting on 5 January, and had then fled with a white flag to a neighbour’s house.
Majdi Abd Rabbo told the Mission that he and his family were traumatized by what had happened to them and did not know what to do now, having lost their home and all their possessions. His children were all suffering psychologically and performing poorly at school. Five months later, in June 2009, Majdi Abd Rabbo was still having nightmares.
The Mission notes that his account to it implies that there were at least three other Palestinian men compelled by the Israeli armed forces to search houses. A journalist’s account indicates that the author “spoke with eight residents of Izbat Abd Rabbo neighbourhood, who testified that they were made to accompany IDF soldiers on missions involving breaking into and searching houses […]. The eight estimated that about 20 local people were made to carry out “escort and protection” missions of various kinds, […], between January 5 and January 12.”
Related posts:Legislative warfare: one phone call turns a civilian into a ‘human shield’National Lawyers Guild says one Israel soldier shot three sisters, executing the 2- and 7-year-old, and paralyzing the 4-year-old11 Palestinian human rights orgs call for investigation of Palestinian violations alleged by Goldstone
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I’m gobsmacked by this. I believe that Realism describes the leaders of modern states as rational actors. This is from Agence France Presse, the article in which Israel’s Diaspora and Information minister Yuli Edelstein says the Goldstone report is anti-Semitic. It’s hard to follow the analogy, but:
"The connection between the Goldstone Report and the international Holocaust memorial day is not an easy thing. On the other hand, however, we must learn the lessons from what happened," Edelstein said.
"Then too, those who yelled out were told that Hitler is a clown and that all the gloomy predictions of the 1930s were nonsense," he added.
Related posts:War on Goldstone now deploys human-rights orgs and, you guessed it, the HolocaustNew attack on the Goldstone report – it’s thwarting Is... (continue)
I’m gobsmacked by this. I believe that Realism describes the leaders of modern states as rational actors. This is from Agence France Presse, the article in which Israel’s Diaspora and Information minister Yuli Edelstein says the Goldstone report is anti-Semitic. It’s hard to follow the analogy, but:
"The connection between the Goldstone Report and the international Holocaust memorial day is not an easy thing. On the other hand, however, we must learn the lessons from what happened," Edelstein said.
"Then too, those who yelled out were told that Hitler is a clown and that all the gloomy predictions of the 1930s were nonsense," he added.
Related posts:War on Goldstone now deploys human-rights orgs and, you guessed it, the HolocaustNew attack on the Goldstone report – it’s thwarting Israeli debate and reflection over GazaOren likens Goldstone to… Nazi threat
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The war that was launched this past weekend against the Goldstone report in the New York Times is aimed at the mildmannered Sec’y General of the United Nations. So Norman Finkelstein tells me, and this Haaretz piece confirms. On February 5, Ban Ki-moon will report to the General Assembly on the progress of the report (which was published last summer by the UN Human Rights Council). Before then Ban will have gotten the Israeli gov’t’s response to the Goldstone report–its effort to nullify the findings–and Haaretz says the goal is to get Ban to say, I accept the Israeli response to the charges, let the Israelis investigate the Gaza slaughter.
Today the campaign for Ban is playing… the Holocaust card! "Israeli leadership is planning an all-out attack on the report to coincide with Wednesda... (continue)
The war that was launched this past weekend against the Goldstone report in the New York Times is aimed at the mildmannered Sec’y General of the United Nations. So Norman Finkelstein tells me, and this Haaretz piece confirms. On February 5, Ban Ki-moon will report to the General Assembly on the progress of the report (which was published last summer by the UN Human Rights Council). Before then Ban will have gotten the Israeli gov’t’s response to the Goldstone report–its effort to nullify the findings–and Haaretz says the goal is to get Ban to say, I accept the Israeli response to the charges, let the Israelis investigate the Gaza slaughter.
Today the campaign for Ban is playing… the Holocaust card! "Israeli leadership is planning an all-out attack on the report to coincide with Wednesday’s anniversary of the 1945 liberation of Auschwitz."– AFP. Israeli leaders are rushing to Auschwitz this week, even as the Israeli information minister has declared the report to be "anti-Semitic."
The world will mark International Holocaust Day on Wednesday. Monday will see President Shimon Peres fly to Berlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leave for a visit to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. They will be joined by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman in Budapest and Information Minister Yuli Edelstein in New York. Before meeting with United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Edelstein referred to the report accusing Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza, calling it "anti-Semitic".
The Israelis are also turning to human rights organizations in this war. Note that in his New York Times in which he published the Israeli claims re Goldstone without contradiction, Ethan Bronner put forward the Arab League report on the Gaza war, prepared by John Dugard, in an effort to make Judge Goldstone seem extreme. Bronner also deployed the Israeli human-rights orgs Breaking the Silence and B’tselem for his tendentious assertion that "virtually no one in Israel" believes that Israel targeted civilians in the war, as Goldstone alleged.
“I do not accept the Goldstone conclusion of a systematic attack on civilian infrastructure,” said Yael Stein, research director of B’Tselem. “It is not convincing."
Yes, and Gaza was reduced to rubble, and numerous police stations and the jail and the legislature and schools and hospitals were targeted and/or destroyed. I wonder what Stein would call that infrastructure? Terrorist infrastructure? "Stein’s comment is an outrageous falsehood, as anyone knowing the timing of the destruction can confirm: 90% of the destruction in the last 72 hours while Israel was withdrawing and in full control of the territory; 2,000 homes were destroyed in that period," explains Finkelstein.
The scholar reminds me that both B’tselem and Breaking the Silence are targets of an Israeli Foreign Ministry effort to end their foreign funding. Rightwing Israeli polls have called B’tselem a "trojan horse." This is mortal combat…
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Cass Sunstein is a member of Obama’s Harvard klatsch, a Harvard professor who has gone on leave to serve as a czar, heading this regulatory office. Well, two years back Sunstein wrote a paper called "Conspiracy Theories," online here (co-authored by another Harvard prof), that is mostly about the bad beliefs that circulate in Muslim societies about American foreign policy. The paper argued that Muslims are specially prone to conspiracy theorizing and blamed this chiefly on the lack of free flow of information in their societies. And while it said that many westerners are also prone to conspiracy thinking, the paper actually entertained the idea that febrile thinking comes from Muslims’ upbringing, a subject I’m sure that Sunstein has studied closely (that was ironic). Excerpts:
Cass Sunstein is a member of Obama’s Harvard klatsch, a Harvard professor who has gone on leave to serve as a czar, heading this regulatory office. Well, two years back Sunstein wrote a paper called "Conspiracy Theories," online here (co-authored by another Harvard prof), that is mostly about the bad beliefs that circulate in Muslim societies about American foreign policy. The paper argued that Muslims are specially prone to conspiracy theorizing and blamed this chiefly on the lack of free flow of information in their societies. And while it said that many westerners are also prone to conspiracy thinking, the paper actually entertained the idea that febrile thinking comes from Muslims’ upbringing, a subject I’m sure that Sunstein has studied closely (that was ironic). Excerpts:
Conspiracy theories flourish in many Middle Eastern and predominantly Muslim societies, so much so that there is a small literature seeking to explain why Muslims are so prone to conspiracy theorizing (One paper by Freudian psychologists even ascribes this “fact” to Muslim childrearing practices; we are skeptical)… it is unsurprising that such theorizing is even more widespread in the Muslim world than the United States. Overall conspiracy theorizing is undoubtedly virulent in the Muslim world, has a sharp anti-American inflection… It is highly likely that the virulence of conspiracy theorizing in Muslim societies has a great deal to do with… weak civil liberties and the lack of a robust market of ideas in many of these nations… The marketplace of ideas, in many Muslim countries, is institutionally fragile, or dominated by powerful governments.
I learned about Sunstein’s paper from Glenn Greenwald, who didn’t go after the Muslim angle but saw the work as "truly pernicious" in its call for active intervention by the U.S. gov’t on the internet to try and counter conspiracy theorizing. And David Bromwich had this wise response to the paper, as an attack on critical thought:
The part I liked best was the definition of a conspiracy theory as a theory that
teaches us to suspect that politicians may act from unavowed motives or attempt to conceal the extent of their machinations. This sweeps away, at a stroke, the entire canon of modern political theory. They were all conspiracy
theorists–Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Burke–and in the twentieth
century Hannah Arendt on the disguises of the total state and Leo Strauss on
esoteric vs. exoteric meaning. Let alone the American radicals and those who
most influenced them: Trenchard and Gordon, Jonathan Mayhew, Paine, Jefferson, Madison. All the latter group supposed that "a long train of abuses" had been deliberately planned and its motives deliberately concealed.
Richard Clarke in his Congressional testimony and then in Against All Enemies may have been the first to say that the neoconservatives close to Cheney and Bush had evidently concerted the strategy of using the September 11 attack to draw the U.S. into war against Iraq, rather than use it to construct a better defense against terrorism (the danger of which they depreciated). On the new prohibitive definition, this, too, is a conspiracy theory. Yet it is recounted as an obvious truth today by people as mainstream as Chris Matthews.
I would add that the paper, while explicitly targeting the Truthers of 9/11, seems to have the hidden agenda (yes I know, I’m smelling conspiracy) of responding to anti-Semitic theories of Jewish influence in the Muslim world. The paper has that aura anyway, with its great apprehension about Muslim-borne theories re the U.S. and Israel. Here I would point out that while the paper approvingly quotes Philip Zelikow, the former head of the 911 Commission, as saying that conspiracy theories are "deeply corrosive to public understanding," it was none other than Zelikow who said that the "real threat" that led to the Iraq war is one that dare not speak its name-- and this was to protect Israel’s security.
"Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I’ll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990 – it’s the threat against Israel," Zelikow told a crowd at the University of Virginia on Sep. 10, 2002… "And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don’t care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell."
I.e., government officials lie about things, because they’re corrupted, or they know that what they’re doing goes against the public interest, or they have a sectarian religious agenda, in sum, they are not prepared to tell the public everything that’s going on…
More from Greenwald on the paper’s "spine-chilling" proposals that "the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-’independent’ advocates to ‘cognitively infiltrate’ online groups and websites — as well as other activist groups — which advocate views that Sunstein deems ‘false conspiracy theories’ about the Government":
This would be designed to increase citizens’ faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists… This program would target those advocating false ‘conspiracy theories,’ which they define to mean: ‘an attempt to explain an event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role’…Covert government propaganda is exactly what Sunstein craves. His mentality is indistinguishable from the Bush mindset that led to these abuses, and he hardly tries to claim otherwise. Indeed, hefavorably cites both the covert Lincoln Park program as well as Paul Bremer’s closing of Iraqi newspapers which published stories the U.S. Government disliked, and justifies them as arguably necessary to combat ‘false conspiracy theories’ in Iraq — the same goal Sunstein has for the U.S.
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Will SCOTUS decision re campaign funding weaken lobby? 25 Jan 2010Scott McConnell My off the cuff reaction is that this Supreme Court ruling on corporate campaign giving is bad for the lobby. It might bring much money into the system from sources that have nothing to do with Israel. And it may even encourage the oil companies to exercise their “free speech” in ways that AIPAC doesn’t like. Surely this is not a “progressive” opinion. I’d be curious if someone who knew more about it confirmed my reaction.
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Jeremiah Haber at Magnes Zionist says the Israeli left is reemerging…
Perhaps I am a sentimentalist, but there is something stirring when professor and student, rav and talmid, who have widely diverging views on the Gaza Offensive, stand together to protest against such a blatant injustice as the Sheikh Jarrah evictions. I would like to think that the student turned to his teacher and recited Victor Laslo’s classic line to Rick at the end of Casablanca:
"Welcome back to the fight. This time I know our side will win."
Let’s hope that the Zionist left, and especially its intellectuals, are coming back to the fight. Not the fight over some elusive Peace Process which always, and only serves the interest of the Israeli Occupation. But the fight against rank and blatant injustice, theft of ... (continue)
Jeremiah Haber at Magnes Zionist says the Israeli left is reemerging…
Perhaps I am a sentimentalist, but there is something stirring when professor and student, rav and talmid, who have widely diverging views on the Gaza Offensive, stand together to protest against such a blatant injustice as the Sheikh Jarrah evictions. I would like to think that the student turned to his teacher and recited Victor Laslo’s classic line to Rick at the end of Casablanca:
"Welcome back to the fight. This time I know our side will win."
Let’s hope that the Zionist left, and especially its intellectuals, are coming back to the fight. Not the fight over some elusive Peace Process which always, and only serves the interest of the Israeli Occupation. But the fight against rank and blatant injustice, theft of land, deprivation of liberty and resources, abuse of power, tyranny of the weak, the whole litany of complaints of the brutal and lengthy Occupation.
For as long as the Palestinian people cannot live as free people in their land, how can any decent person support the aspiration of Jews to live as free people in their own land?
Is one people’s hope and freedom inferior to the other’s?
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Protest in Beirut against Egypt’s "Wall of Shame" on the border with Gaza.
I want to focus attention on an issue that hasn’t gotten enough press. The Mubarak regime is building a subterranean steel wall on the border with Gaza. Conservative estimates put the depth of the wall at 18 meters (nearly 60 feet). The BBC reports that American engineers designed the wall panels, which were constructed in America.
30-meter-deep holes are being bored into the ground on the Palestinian side of the wall. Egypt will pump salt water from the Mediterranean Sea into the earth to destroy the tunnels – the lifeblood of the besieged Gazan Palestinians. Soil quality will be degraded and the Coastal aquifer, Gaza’s source of potable water, may well be destroyed.
The deranged Obama-Netanyahu-Mubarak ca... (continue)
Protest in Beirut against Egypt’s "Wall of Shame" on the border with Gaza.
I want to focus attention on an issue that hasn’t gotten enough press. The Mubarak regime is building a subterranean steel wall on the border with Gaza. Conservative estimates put the depth of the wall at 18 meters (nearly 60 feet). The BBC reports that American engineers designed the wall panels, which were constructed in America.
30-meter-deep holes are being bored into the ground on the Palestinian side of the wall. Egypt will pump salt water from the Mediterranean Sea into the earth to destroy the tunnels – the lifeblood of the besieged Gazan Palestinians. Soil quality will be degraded and the Coastal aquifer, Gaza’s source of potable water, may well be destroyed.
The deranged Obama-Netanyahu-Mubarak cabal seems to be possessed of a biblical rage. Dare to defy the divine edict? We will crush your men, women and children underfoot. Refuse to starve? We will raze your cities, poison your wells, and salt the earth. Their grandiosity – think of it, they’re building an 18-meter-deep steel wall(!) for 11 kilometers – beggars belief, and beggars Gazans.
Protests have erupted across the Arab world and Europe targeting Egyptian embassies and consulates; I attended one yesterday in Beirut. But the Egyptian regime isn’t responsive to popular pressure, so a group of activists here in Lebanon have begun a movement to draw attention to the Egyptian company assembling the wall – Arab Contractors. Our hope is that details emerge, other companies can be targeted. I reported on our first press conference for Electronic Intifada.
We spend so much time on the Zionists in Israel, Egypt and America and their actions today that the big picture sometimes loses focus. The most powerful state in the world – and its regional lackeys – are targeting the people in Gaza for… what? For starvation? For extermination? What is Mr. Obama’s endgame here? Once the tunnels are gone, the land degraded and the water undrinkable… well, then what? I cannot express how I feel. There is no solace in this tragedy.
Ahmed Moor is a Gaza-born Palestinian-American freelance journalist living in Beirut.
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This website and others have come under criticism for discussing how Israel’s supporters are using the disaster in Haiti for propaganda purposes. Both the websites Hybrid States and War in Context have already rebutted this criticism head on, and it seems that the article below provides amazing confirmation of this disturbing trend in Israeli hasbara.
The following article appeared in Maariv, Israel’s second most popular newspaper, and was written by Tamir Haas who identifies himself as a "publicist" and "media consultant." It was translated into English by Shmuel Sermoneta-Gertel.
The Painful Truth: The Haiti Disaster is Good for the Jews
As sorry as we are about the horror in Haiti, the current positive attitude to Israel – thanks to the IDF delegation – shows that the country must... (continue)
This website and others have come under criticism for discussing how Israel’s supporters are using the disaster in Haiti for propaganda purposes. Both the websites Hybrid States and War in Context have already rebutted this criticism head on, and it seems that the article below provides amazing confirmation of this disturbing trend in Israeli hasbara.
The following article appeared in Maariv, Israel’s second most popular newspaper, and was written by Tamir Haas who identifies himself as a "publicist" and "media consultant." It was translated into English by Shmuel Sermoneta-Gertel.
The Painful Truth: The Haiti Disaster is Good for the Jews
As sorry as we are about the horror in Haiti, the current positive attitude to Israel – thanks to the IDF delegation – shows that the country must engage in proactive as well as reactive hasbara.
Tamir Haas 21/1/2010, Maariv-NRG
At a time when our country is under media attack on the basis of harsh and anti-Semitic reports, and we are forced to contend with terrorists who have assumed the winning image of victims of war, one could say that the Haiti disaster is the best thing that could have happened to us. So why are blood, destruction, poverty, hunger and orphans good for the Jewish State? First of all because global attention has been drawn elsewhere and the international media have a more interesting story to cover. Second, because every disaster-area needs a hero, and right now we are it. I must admit that I would not be surprised if the image aspect of setting up a hospital in Haiti, as well as the IDF rescue efforts, was given greater weight than humanitarian considerations. If I am right, then finally, someone in the Knesset has done the right thing, deciding to take advantage of the opportunity to prove to the world how kindhearted and capable we are. And if the Foreign Ministry manages to make further use of the Israeli success stories in Haiti and market them to the world, all the better. We can only hope that none of our talented politicians is caught in front of a camera saying “We showed the world. We were really awesome in Haiti,” or something like that – a distinct possibility considering the recent mess with the Turks. Better to be modest.
Those in Charge Don’t see Hasbara as Warfare
The tough question raised by our success in Haiti is why we do well in the media only when we have the opportunity to star in another country’s disaster, and not on a regular basis? After all, you can’t have a natural disaster every day. The answer to the question is a lack of concerted effort to garner sympathy from the countries of the world, alongside behaviour that actually creates antagonism, such as humiliating ambassadors on camera. Before criticizing current hasbara practice however, we must realize that our biggest problem lies in the way we approach the entire issue of image. First of all, our elected representatives see themselves as politicians rather than statesmen, and so prefer to focus on their own personal interests, rather than on those of the country. Every Israeli citizen is knows this, to the point that we can’t stand our own leaders, so why does it come as surprise that the rest of the world isn’t too crazy about us either? Second, those in charge of the country’s PR don’t see hasbara as warfare, just like any military operation, intended to safeguard and promote our national and security interests. If hasbara were to receive the attention it deserves, with the kind of funding that security gets, our media performance would be better, Foreign Ministry officials would be more professional, foreign ministers would not act like rookies, and most importantly, we would have long-term plans and strategies.
Proof of Amateurishness and Lack of Professionalism
You want proof of the amateurishness and lack of professionalism I’m talking about? Here: “Hasbara is the responsibility of the IDF, not the Foreign Ministry”. This is what Danny Ayalon told participants at a recent conference of the Israel Public Relations Association. Does this mean that there is no hasbara coordination between the IDF and the Foreign Ministry? Is this how Ayalon washes his hands of Israel’s image problem? If so, is it any wonder that he behaves so recklessly, setting the Turkish Prime Minister up for a slam dunk? After all, he seems to think that the consequences, in terms of Israel’s image, are not his responsibility. In the above statement, Ayalon doesn’t even bother to hand some of the responsibility to Information Minister Yuli Edelstein. If the Foreign Ministry doesn’t give a damn about the Information Ministry, why should anyone else?
We have to stop concentrating all of our efforts on reaction and start taking the initiative. There are a lot of things we can do to facilitate hasbara: subsidizing tourism from countries in which Israel suffers from a relatively poor image, or a hasbara unit that would focus on marketing the stories of victims of terrorism (like they do in Gaza), or hasbara designed specifically to appeal to countries with strategic importance, etc. But before we do anything, we must first understand that hasbara is war and should be treated like any other aspect of homeland security. After that, we can move forward.
Note that Richard Silverstein is on this story too.
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Scott Horton draws tellingly on Auden and Homer in this follow-up to his remarkable piece, "The Guantanamo 'Suicides'," the story of three captives – all of them innocent men, cleared for later release – who were almost certainly murdered in a secret site in the American concentration camp in 2006, apparently for protesting prison conditions. (We examined Horton's story here.)
The men were evidently killed during "strenuous interrogation" -- i.e., they had rags stuffed down their throat while being beaten. When they died, a ludicrous story of a mutual suicide pact -- under impossible physical conditions -- was concocted by American authorities, complete with outright lies about the men being "hardcore" terrorists who killed themselves as an act of "asymmetrical warfare." The cover-up o... (continue)
Scott Horton draws tellingly on Auden and Homer in this follow-up to his remarkable piece, "The Guantanamo 'Suicides'," the story of three captives – all of them innocent men, cleared for later release – who were almost certainly murdered in a secret site in the American concentration camp in 2006, apparently for protesting prison conditions. (We examined Horton's story here.)
The men were evidently killed during "strenuous interrogation" -- i.e., they had rags stuffed down their throat while being beaten. When they died, a ludicrous story of a mutual suicide pact -- under impossible physical conditions -- was concocted by American authorities, complete with outright lies about the men being "hardcore" terrorists who killed themselves as an act of "asymmetrical warfare." The cover-up of these killings goes up to the highest levels of the U.S. government – and it continues most forcefully to this day under the Obama Administration. It is a sickening -- but most instructive -- story.
In his latest piece, Horton notes:
The three men who died in Guantánamo on the night of June 9, 2006 certainly had failings and foibles as all men do; no one will portray them as angels. To its credit, the Bush Administration even seems to have determined to set two of them free; the third had only to await resolution of diplomatic problems between the United States and his homeland. These men were not warriors engaged in some vicious military campaign against the United States, nor was there a scintilla of evidence linking them to any crime. “They were small/ And could not hope for help and no help came,” Auden writes. And what was the reaction of the world to their plight? Auden describes it perfectly, and indeed it was only to be expected: “A crowd of ordinary decent folk/ Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke.” The only difference here is the sentries, who at great risk to themselves and their families have stepped forward to place on the record exactly what they saw. They know it defies the official story; they know they may suffer retribution for it; and they know that what they saw is not conclusive in any event. It is only a fragment of the truth, which needs to be put forward and made a part of the historical record. It was offered out of respect for the dignity of the dead and out of conviction that the truth should not be suppressed, no matter how unpleasant. In the corridors of power, however, a river surges past, indifferent to all these questions, viewing them as an insignificant distraction from the troubles of a war.
Auden’s poem is a work of beauty and power. It has prophetic vision, but that vision is a nightmare. It is born from the horrors of World War II. The barbed wire of concentration camps and death camps brings the Homeric epoch up to date. Auden is not portraying the tragedies of the last war as such. He is warning of a world to come in which totalitarian societies dominate and the worth and dignity of the individual human being are lost. He warns those who stand by, decent though they may seemingly be, and say nothing–perhaps because political calculus or the chimera of national glory have blinded them to the greater moral imperatives against homicide, torture and the dissemination of lies in the cause of war.
You should read the whole piece -- and keep it constantly in mind when wading through all the earnest, endless disquisitions about the weighty affairs and political fortunes of our great and good, all of them written as if these people, our leaders, our bipartisan elites, are somehow normal, as if they are not brutally depraved and indifferent to the point of moral insanity. (show less)
Barack Obama has come out swinging following his party's rout in Massachusetts, vowing to "fight Wall Street" with a "populist" proposal whose main thrust seems to be the reinstatement of some of the common-sense regulations imposed almost 80 years ago to separate banks and investment firms. (I say "seems to be," because one can only guess what, if anything, Obama really intends to do about the matter. For despite the usual elevated rhetoric, he is, as usual, "leaving crucial details to be hashed out by Congress," as the NY Times reports. And we know how populist those paladins can be when they get down to hashing out crucial details.)
Of course, those old regulations were repealed by the bipartisan free-market extremists of the Clinton Era -- many of whom are now once more in charge ... (continue)
Barack Obama has come out swinging following his party's rout in Massachusetts, vowing to "fight Wall Street" with a "populist" proposal whose main thrust seems to be the reinstatement of some of the common-sense regulations imposed almost 80 years ago to separate banks and investment firms. (I say "seems to be," because one can only guess what, if anything, Obama really intends to do about the matter. For despite the usual elevated rhetoric, he is, as usual, "leaving crucial details to be hashed out by Congress," as the NY Times reports. And we know how populist those paladins can be when they get down to hashing out crucial details.)
Of course, those old regulations were repealed by the bipartisan free-market extremists of the Clinton Era -- many of whom are now once more in charge of national economic policy, such as Obama's main economic adviser, Larry Summers. And the fact that Obama is just now vaguely proposing such a move, a year after taking office -- and after engineering the transfer to trillions of dollars in cash, credit guarantees, bailouts and other forms of baksheesh to Wall Street -- cannot but evoke three little words that nonetheless speak volumes: horse, barn, door.
And even in the highly hypothetical likelihood that Obama was actually serious about "reining in the banks" -- that is, serious enough to actually have his staff draw up the crucial details themselves before handing the "fight" over to the banks' own bagmen in Congress -- it would be a moot point anyway, given the Supreme Court's promulgation of its Corporate Enabling Act this week. Although their ruling to remove the few existing -- and pathetic -- restraints on Big Money's domination of the electoral process is indeed bad news, one must also admire the Court's frankness in allowing this domination to step forth and stand out boldly, nakedly, no longer having to hide itself in dirty dodges and furtive tricks. (For more on the ramifications of the ruling, see this piece from Christopher Ketcham at Counterpunch.)
But even as the highways and byways and blogways of the Potomac power grid are all engrossed in the usual partisan navel-gazing, the hard, dirty work of empire goes on.* This week there was yet another killing of civilians in Afghanistan by the ever-surging NATO-led forces, including two boys, aged 11 and 15. As Reuters reports:
Over 100 people took to the streets of a small bazaar in Qarabagh district in Ghazni province, southwest of Kabul, to demonstrate, locals told Reuters by telephone.
Villagers who brought the bodies of four people to the hospital in the provincial capital of Ghazni city said three of the victims belonged to one family. Two were boys 11 and 15, villagers said.
Naturally, the American-led occupation forces said that no civilians were killed in what they called a raid "designed to capture a 'high-level Taliban commander known to direct attacks'. Unfortunately for the spinmeisters, an actual journalist, Nir Rosen, has been on the case. He provided this report to Professor As'ad AbuKhalil:
Nir Rosen sent me this from Kabul (I cite with his permission): "I met today with the parliament member from qara bagh district. He's not anti-occupation and even wants more operations but he confirmed that all the dead were innocent and were not fighters and two were quite young".
"All the dead were innocent." And two of them were children.
This is the reality when we should keep in mind as we wade through the endlessly chewed cud of petty partisan in-fighting among the court factions of our militarist empire. Every day, every night, someone's blood is being offered up on the imperial altars. That's what empire is. That's what empire does.
***
See Rome
While you were dreaming
While you wrapped your mind in silks
Bronze Steel Stone
Did their work
While you breathed the fumes
Of the oracle's fissure
Deranged the senses
Settled in soft beds
Rome
Sent agents into the streets
Hard men pinched men
Bronze Steel Stone
To eliminate execute
Discredit and destroy
See Rome
While you stood in the forum
Declaimed high words
Filled temples with fragrant smoke
Scrawled millions of learned disquisitions
Rome marched
Somewhere, in your name
Fired the village
In your name
Put steel to the belly
While you were wrapped in silks
While you grubbed
While you drank degraded waters
Drank dark, brilliant wine
While you sang, while you dreamed
For years, the all-consuming international struggle against the scourge of terrorism has been hampered at times by the fact that no one has been able to provide us with a rock-solid, comprehensive definition of the term. What, exactly, is "terrorism?" Great minds have grappled with this question in learned journals, academic symposia, think-tank fora, government entmoots, and across the commanding heights of the media. The matter is of some moment, as any person or organization to whom this ill-defined label is applied automatically becomes a target for "the path of action," to borrow the stirring phraseology of former U.S. president George W. Bush.
Indeed, some cynics have advanced the notion that the definition of terrorism has been left vague deliberately, in order to retain the deg... (continue)
For years, the all-consuming international struggle against the scourge of terrorism has been hampered at times by the fact that no one has been able to provide us with a rock-solid, comprehensive definition of the term. What, exactly, is "terrorism?" Great minds have grappled with this question in learned journals, academic symposia, think-tank fora, government entmoots, and across the commanding heights of the media. The matter is of some moment, as any person or organization to whom this ill-defined label is applied automatically becomes a target for "the path of action," to borrow the stirring phraseology of former U.S. president George W. Bush.
Indeed, some cynics have advanced the notion that the definition of terrorism has been left vague deliberately, in order to retain the degree of elasticity necessary for the term's application where and when as needed to advance one's particular political or ideological agenda. Of course, those who lack the phrenological bump of cynicism would ascribe this confusion to the artless, inherent difficulties of semantic expression all too common to our human kind. In any case, there has been, as the saying goes, much throwing about of brains on the subject, and to little effect.
But now this intractable problem has been resolved at last. And as you might expect, the man who cut this Gordian knot is one of the towering and tireless intellects of our age: Bill Clinton. To my shame, I have only recently become acquainted with his breakthrough, which was published in the December 2009 issue of Foreign Policy magazine. The chagrin I feel at my ignorance is mitigated somewhat by the fact that Mr. Clinton's brilliant formulation seems to have been largely ignored. This is no doubt because it was embedded in the vast sea of verbal gems and dazzling aperçus that the former president poured forth in his charmingly voluble fashion.
(For instance, who could fail to be dazzled by this Clintonian insight: "Tom Friedman is our most gifted journalist at actually looking at what is happening in the world and figuring out its relevance to tomorrow and figuring out a clever way to say it that sticks in your mind -- like "real men raise the gas tax." You know what I mean?" For more on this gifted journalist and his remarkable turns of phrase, see here. Mr. Clinton also lauded "big thinkers on the question of identity" like "Samuel Huntingdon, who wrote the famous book, The Clash of Civilizations." Huntingdon's book has indeed been influential, perhaps decisive, in shaping the worldview of our leading statesmen and opinion-shapers – despite the petty quibbling from second-raters, like Nobelist Amartya Sen (author of Identity and Violence), who claim that Huntingdon's magisterial wisdom is in reality somewhat lacking in intellectual heft and moral substance; some go so far as to claim his work is actually shallow, reductive, highly toxic racist tripe. But of course Mr. Clinton and our great and good know better.)
Thus primed with these sprays and sprigs of genius from the emeritus statesman, it is no surprise when we stumble onto his definitive definition of terrorism, tossed off almost casually in the midst of a disquisition on just how long the clash of civilizations known as the War on Terror might last. Cutting to the chase, as is ever his wont, Clinton nails the truth about terrorism:
Terror mean[s] killing and robbery and coercion by people who do not have state authority and go beyond national borders.
Like a bolt of sunlight breaking through a lowering cloud, Clinton's formulation floods one's brain with sudden illumination. "Killing and robbery and coercion by people who do not have state authority" – that's terrorism. Killing and robbery and coercion by people who do have state authority is, obviously, something else altogether: humanitarian intervention, perhaps, or liberation, or preservation of national security, or maintaining great-power credibility, or restoring hope, or a pre-dawn vertical insertion.
In any case, and every case, if this border-transcending activity is done by people who have state authority, then it is legitimate, it is good, it is necessary, it is noble. And even if, sometimes, on rare occasions, mistakes are made during the killing, robbing and coercing done by people who have state authority, these mistakes are only ever the result of good intentions gone awry.
So there you have it: what terrorism is depends on who does it. Naturally, there are nuances and complexities that Mr. Clinton did not go into here; it was an interview, after all, not a scholarly monograph. Obviously, the legitimacy of killing, robbing and coercing by people who have state authority is entirely dependent on the state from which that authority derives. Only those states which by their cheerful acceptance of America's benevolent guidance and abiding friendship have proven themselves worthy can legitimately exercise their authority to kill, rob and coerce. All others must forbear – or else be branded "rogue states," purveyors of "state terror," which in turn makes them eligible for "the path of action."
We are all deeply indebted to former President Clinton for bringing his legendary acumen to bear on this perplexing problem. Not for the first time do we lament the passage of the 22nd Amendment, which has prevented this acolyte of Huntingdon and Friedman from continuing to guide the ship of state. We can, however, rejoice that his own acolytes, associates, aides and advisors – and even his marriage partner! – now gird the current administration with their wise counsel. (show less)
Democrats and progressives are crying doom over the party's defeat in Massachusetts. The loss, we're told, is a blow to Barack Obama's political agenda, and so it is. They say it's a shame that yet another rightwing zealot who advocates torture is now in the Senate, and so it is. But it is precisely that agenda that led to the loss, and the shame. It is that agenda which has resurrected a rightwing party that was dead in the water, and empowered its most extreme elements.
And what is Barack Obama's agenda? What is his political program? It breaks down into three main elements: unwinnable wars, unconscionable bailouts, and unworkable, unwanted health care "reform" that forces people to further enrich some of the most despised conglomerates in the land. It is, in every way, a recipe for... (continue)
Democrats and progressives are crying doom over the party's defeat in Massachusetts. The loss, we're told, is a blow to Barack Obama's political agenda, and so it is. They say it's a shame that yet another rightwing zealot who advocates torture is now in the Senate, and so it is. But it is precisely that agenda that led to the loss, and the shame. It is that agenda which has resurrected a rightwing party that was dead in the water, and empowered its most extreme elements.
And what is Barack Obama's agenda? What is his political program? It breaks down into three main elements: unwinnable wars, unconscionable bailouts, and unworkable, unwanted health care "reform" that forces people to further enrich some of the most despised conglomerates in the land. It is, in every way, a recipe for moral, economic and political disaster. It is a gigantic anchor tied around the neck of the Democratic Party, and it will drag the whole lumbering wreck back to the bottom in short order.
It also provides a fertile breeding ground for the willful, belligerent ignorance of the Right to thrive. With such an egregiously stupid and destructive agenda at work in the White House, opponents need only say that they are against it, and they are guaranteed a wide following. Who would not be against unwinnable war, unconscionable bailouts and unworkable boondoggles serving rapacious elites? The actual positions held by these opponents – the actual policies they will pursue once in power – are given little scrutiny in such circumstances. The opponent represents change from a hated status quo – and that's enough. Later, when their odious positions come to light, it is too late.
Where have we seen this dynamic at work before? Oh yes, it was way back in November 2008. Barack Obama represented change from the hated status quo, from the agenda of the ruling Republican party. And what was that agenda? Why, unwinnable wars, unconscionable bailouts and the assiduous service of rapacious elites. The actual positions held by Obama – the actual policies that he would pursue once in power – were given little scrutiny. Except by a precious few – such as Arthur Silber, who long ago warned that Obama's election would be ruinous for genuine progressive change, that he would merely put a new gloss on the old corruption while disarming dissent from 'progressives,' who would feel bound to support the president against his rightwing enemies – even if it meant "holding their noses" and supporting bad policies like the health care reform bill or the Afghan surge.
Now it is obvious to all that Obama's core agenda is the same as Bush's: maintaining the elitist, militarist, corporatist system in all its essential elements. The "War on Terror" goes on, expanding into new lands. Torture and murder are still countenanced and concealed, in concentration camps and secret sites that are still in operation. All of Bush's most egregious assertions of authoritarian power are embraced and defended in court. Wall Street is rewarded, not regulated for its vast crimes. The legislative architect and champion of one of the most regressive, punitive, draconian acts of class war in our time – the Bankruptcy Bill, that atom bomb dropped on working people, the sick, the old and the young – has been plucked from deserved obscurity and made Vice President of the United States. A grotesquely expensive, unjust and dysfunctional health care system is not only left intact by "reform," it is given millions of new, captive customers, and more public money to guarantee its profits.
Once again, the question arises: Is this a winning agenda?
It is not just Obama's agenda, of course. It is the agenda of the Democratic Party: war, empire, and corporate profit über alles. Is this really worth defending, even with a held nose? Yet progressives and liberals will continue to insist that, bad as it is, we've got to keep supporting the Democratic Party – because there is no alternative, because otherwise, Tea Party torture mavens like Scott Brown or Sarah Palin will get elected.
But as we've already noted above, it is the Democratic agenda itself that is opening the door for extremist opponents, who then exploit the genuine dissatisfaction and genuine suffering caused by that agenda. The fact that these opponents also support the same core agenda means that the nation will keep ping-ponging back and forth, with an electorate hungry for change desperately chasing anyone who promises it – only to rush back in the other direction when the 'change agent' proves to be just another stooge of the status quo.
This destructive, corrosive dynamic – this ever-worsening death spiral – is what progressives are actually supporting and enabling when they "hold their noses" to support Democrats. The Republicans and Democrats are now simply two factions of the same party – the party of war and greed. To support one faction, no matter what, with held noses or open arms, in such a locked system only perpetuates and exacerbates its worst elements.
Oh, but there's no choice, we are told, with earnest handwringing, by our leading progressives. Third parties are not viable in our system, we are informed by our savvy progressive realists; there can be no effective political movement outside the two main parties. Indeed, no less than Digby herself has declared that the only alternative to working with this closed system (which means, in practice, supporting the Democratic Party) is violent revolution: "Pick up your muskets, kids, or STFU."
And so this is what we've come to. This is the "progressive" answer to any genuine, non-violent rejection of the Democratic faction's agenda of war and greed: "Shut the fuck up." My, wouldn't Martin Luther King Jr. be delighted with that? Wouldn't Thomas Jefferson revel in such delicious eloquence, such deep thought?
Look, I know it's not easy. I was born and raised a Yellow Dawg Democrat myself, and remained one for most of my life. I know what it's like to be hardwired for supporting Democrats, come hell or high water, giving them every benefit of the doubt, turning a blind eye here, making a furious rationalization there. These tribal loyalties are very difficult to lay down; it really can feel like turning your back on your family. And of course the belligerent, bellicose, willfully ignorant Republicans are loathsome and dangerous.
But there comes a time when you must face the truth – or be lost to truth forever. There comes a time to recognize that the Democratic Party and Republican Party are part of the same corrupted entity. There comes a time to recognize that the Democratic Party's agenda is not only ruinous in itself, unworthy of the support of anyone who cares about justice, peace, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – it is also empowering those very same loathsome and dangerous Republicans. There comes a time for even the most partisan tribalist (and I have been one) to accept the hard judgment of reality: that the Democratic Party is part of the problem, not the solution.
To say that there is no alternative to supporting this locked-in, closed-off, two-faction system of war and greed is an act of craven surrender to that system. To dismiss all hope for forging genuine alternatives to this system -- whether these be other political parties or more general movements aiming not for political power but for broader changes in social consciousness -- is a counsel of despair. It condemns us, and the world, to yet another generation of violence, chaos and corruption, another long, long journey away from the light. It is, as noted above, a recipe for disaster in every way.
But if you want more Scott Browns in power, then by all means, keep pushing that Democratic agenda. You'll soon have Scott Browns and Sarah Palins running out of your ears. (show less)
With international turf battles and diplomatic spats slowing the distribution of food, water, medicine and security in Haiti, the stricken people are now fleeing to the countryside. This may actually help the situation in one sense, as it might be easier to get aid to more people in unruined areas; however, it will also put a great strain on regions which are themselves mired in poverty and deprivation, and lacking in infrastructure.
Meanwhile, in Port-au-Prince, as aid begins to trickle in, anguished medical professionals are lamenting the multitude of unnecessary deaths that the bureaucratic bottlenecks have caused. As the Guardian reports:
Médecins sans Frontières says confusion over who is running the relief effort – the US which controls the main airport, or the UN which says ... (continue)
With international turf battles and diplomatic spats slowing the distribution of food, water, medicine and security in Haiti, the stricken people are now fleeing to the countryside. This may actually help the situation in one sense, as it might be easier to get aid to more people in unruined areas; however, it will also put a great strain on regions which are themselves mired in poverty and deprivation, and lacking in infrastructure.
Meanwhile, in Port-au-Prince, as aid begins to trickle in, anguished medical professionals are lamenting the multitude of unnecessary deaths that the bureaucratic bottlenecks have caused. As the Guardian reports:
Médecins sans Frontières says confusion over who is running the relief effort – the US which controls the main airport, or the UN which says it is overseeing distribution – may have led to hundreds of avoidable deaths because it has not been able to get essential supplies in to the country. "The co-ordination ... is not existing or not functioning at this stage," said Benoit Leduc, MSF's operations manager in Port-au-Prince. "I don't really know who is in charge. Between the two systems (the US and the UN) I don't think there is smooth liaison [over] who decides what."
...There has been criticism from some aid agencies of the Americans for giving priority to military flights at the airport while planes carrying relief supplies are unable to land. MSF has had five planes turned back from the airport in recent days, three carrying essential medical supplies and two with expert surgical personnel.
"We lost 48 hours because of these access problems," said Leduc. "Of course it is a small airport, but this is clearly a matter of defining priorities."
Asked how many avoidable deaths had been caused by the delays, he said that hundreds of critical lifesaving operations had been delayed by two days.
"We are talking about septicaemia. The morgues in the hospitals are full," he said.
... John O'Shea, the head of the Irish medical charity, Goal, [said], "there is only one thing stopping a massive and prodigious aid effort being rolled out and that is leadership and co-ordination. You have neither in Haiti at the moment."
The American government response has largely been a militarized one. But the celebrated American war machine -- whose annual budgets could lift millions out of poverty, deprivation and lack of infrastructure every year -- seems too musclebound to respond with the precision and flexibility that the situation requires. No doubt most of the individuals involved in the effort are working tirelessly; but a system designed for war, for death, destruction and domination, will never be a fit instrument for humanitarian relief.
The chief face of the United States in Haiti right now are highly-armed veterans of imperial wars, trained for conquest and occupation -- and many of them strained by multiple tours. And while many Haitians will greet the sight of any organized force coming to help them, America's long and ugly history with Haiti is not forgotten either, as Ed Pilkington notes:
The Haitian in whose house in Port-au-Prince we are staying – a prominent businessman and generally very pro-America – keeps a cherished machete on his wall. It was used, he explained to me one night, by his grandfather to attack US soldiers during the 1915-1934 American occupation of his country.
Writing on Monday, Pilkington also detailed the fatal slowness of the musclebound relief effort:
Day seven of the catastrophe, yet wherever we go we are still surrounded by crowds of people living on the streets pleading with us for water. A few miles away at the airport huge quantities of supplies are stacked high in the sun. Under a deal finalised between the heads of relevant parties on Sunday night, US troops will be responsible for securing the incoming supplies at the airport, and then moving them to four central distribution hubs. One of those hubs is at the national football stadium in downtown Port-au-Prince and another at a golf course near the US embassy.
That will free up troops from the UN peacekeeping force in Haiti, so the official line goes, to take charge of the next stage of the process – getting the aid out of the central hubs and to the neighbourhoods. For that purpose the UN has pinpointed 14 distribution locations where it, together with aid groups, will hand out the goods.
The plan sounds neat, thoroughly thought-out, fool-proof. There is only one problem: it is several days late.
A vast, permanent, completely mobile, well-trained, civilian rescue and restoration corps could easily be maintained by the United States, at the merest fraction of what it now pays out for its regular "war supplements" -- never mind the obscenely bloated 'regular' Pentagon budget. (And yes, such a corps would have a security component, made up of officers who have been trained to deal with suffering people in extremity -- not those trained to inflict suffering and extremity on people.)
This seems like a somewhat better use of public money than, say, waging endless wars to "project dominance" to the four corners of the earth, or bailing out a kleptoplutocracy that has wrecked the global economy and ruined the lives of millions around the world -- or even enriching pharmaceutical and med-biz conglomerates beyond the dreams of avarice just to claim you have passed health care "reform" without actually reforming an insanely expensive and unjust system. But like Dennis Kuchinich's idea of a "Department of Peace," any notion of a full-scale rescue corps would be hooted off the national stage by the super-savvy serious "realists" who rule our discourse, and our lives.
So we will go on as we are now. When natural disasters strike -- and they will be striking more often, and with deadlier effect, on our crowded, corroded planet in the years to come -- we will simply follow the same old pattern: launching ad hoc, inept attempts to retool a few bits and pieces of the lumbering War Machine for temporary humanitarian service. And once again, hundreds, if not thousands, of stricken people will die needless deaths.
NOTE: As noted here the other day, two good venues for giving aid to Haiti are Partners in Health and the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund, both of whom have been working in Haiti for many years. (show less)
Dissident Voice
a radical newsletter in the struggle for peace and social justice
The Shoa Must Go on 25 Jan 2010Gilad Atzmon Last week saw Holocaust survivor Thomas Blatt, 82 give testimony at the trial of John Demjanjuk. Blatt stated that he still has nightmares about his time at the camp at Sobibor, “I go there in my dreams, they are so real. In them I am still there. I can’t get it out of my head. [...]
Flight 253 Cover-Up: “No Smoking Gun” Claims Undercut by New Disclosures 25 Jan 2010Tom Burghardt Nearly one month after passengers foiled an attempted suicide bomb attack aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 as it approached Detroit on Christmas Day, new information reveals that the White House and U.S. security agencies had specific intelligence on accused terrorist, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, far earlier than previously acknowledged.
Along with new reports, evidence suggests that the [...]
Israel Creates First “Army-owned” University 25 Jan 2010Jonathan Cook Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence minister, approved last week the upgrading to university status of a college in a settlement located deep inside the West Bank, a move certain to further undermine Palestinian confidence in the peace process.
The decision, authorising the first Israeli university in Palestinian territory, is expected to entitle the college to significant extra [...]
Great Television/Bad Journalism 25 Jan 2010Robert Jensen CNN’s star anchor Anderson Cooper narrates a chaotic street scene in Port-au-Prince. A boy is struck in the head by a rock thrown by a looter from a roof. Cooper helps him to the side of the road, and then realizes the boy is disoriented and unable to get away. Laying down his digital camera [...]
The Peace Movement Needs a Re-Start 25 Jan 2010Kevin Zeese In his first year, President Obama broke several war-making records of President George W. Bush. He passed the largest military budget in U.S. history, the largest one-year war supplemental and fired the most drone attacks on the most countries. He began 2010 asking for another $30 billion war supplemental and with the White [...]
Iraq snapshot 25 Jan 2010Common Ills Monday January 25, 2010. Chaos and violence continue, Baghdad is slammed with bombings, the Iraq Inquiry continues in England, the witch hunt against Nouri's political rivals continues in Iraq, and more. US Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Iraq at the end of last week as the intended March elections faced further threats. Will they take place? Will they be seen as fair and free or,
Tony Blair prepares as do the demonstrators 25 Jan 2010Common Ills This Friday, January 29th, the former prime minister and all time poodle Tony Blair will appear before the Iraq Inquiry in London. A major protest is expected to take place outside as War Criminal Tony testifies. From Stop The War Coalition's "Protest on Tony Blair's Judgement Day: 29 January from 8am:" New Stop the War pamphlet Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre, BroadSanctuary, Westminster,
One Special Inspector General report buried, one noted 25 Jan 2010Common Ills Today the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction has released the [PDF format warning] report entitled "Department of State Grant Management: Limited Oversight of Costs and Impact of International Republican Institute and National Democratic Institute Democracy Grants." (Note, page one of the report carries the date January 26, 2010.) What's the 37 page report dealing
Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Commander of the Groin" 24 Jan 2010Common Ills Isaiah's latest The World Today Just Nuts "Commander of the Groin." Barack holds a basketball, wears a Laker's shirt with a zero and declares, "I didn't end the Iraq War. I didn't close Guantanamo. I'm skipping Jury Duty just like Bush too! Only I was never arrested. As far as the press knows anyway." Watching fro mthe distance, Barry blogger Little Dicky moans, "He's still the commander of
And the war drags on . . . . 24 Jan 2010Common Ills Friday, January 29th, one time prime minister and all time poodle Tony Blair will appear before the Iraq Inquiry in London. A major protest is expected to take place outside as War Criminal Tony testifies. From Stop The War Coalition's "Protest on Tony Blair's Judgement Day: 29 January from 8am:" New Stop the War pamphlet Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre, BroadSanctuary, Westminster, London
Robbing Grandma to Reward Wall Street 25 Jan 2010by Martha BurkWhen I grew up in Texas, the dance we all learned was the Texas
two-step. But times have changed. The next big dance these days could
be called the Social Security double shuffle. A good number of senators
are waltzing to the music of the "let's cut Social Security" crowd by
trying to sell a solution to the deficit designed to hack apart the
government-guaranteed retirement plan we've had since the 1930s.
read more
Who Should Run the Fed? 25 Jan 2010by Greg KaufmannIf you weren't convinced before that Ben Bernanke should be replaced
as Chairman of the Federal Reserve you might be now. Wall Street's
Humble Servant--Secretary Timothy Geithner--has
warned that if Bernanke is replaced, "I think the markets would view
that as a very troubling thing to the economy as a whole."read more
Wall Street Bonuses Can Create One Million Green Jobs 25 Jan 2010by Les LeopoldPresident Obama may be joining the populist crusade against Wall
Street. In the span of one week he opened up a three front war: a tax
on big banks, full support for a new Consumer Financial Protection
Agency, and the embrace of Paul Volcker's plan to break up the big
banks.
It's about time. Or has the time already passed?
Yes, there is enormous popular anger against Wall Street and the
bailouts. However, the deepest anger is rooted in the enormous fears
and hardships caused by the lack of jobs. read more
Can the Human Race Outgrow War? 25 Jan 2010by James CarrollWe scoured the woods for the perfect Y-shaped stick - each of its
finger-branches similarly stout, the main shaft able to fit snuggly
into a closed fist. Attach to the Y-ends a set of rubber bands braided
around a leather patch and you had a sling shot.
Then we discovered the lethal virtue of black rubber strips cut from
discarded inner tubes. Our projectile supply escalated from pebbles to
marbles to ball bearings. A squad of three or four, we were best
friends, roaming the woods for rabbits - and, in our minds, for Chi-com
soldiers our uncles were fighting in Korea.read more
Afghanistan: This War Won't Work 25 Jan 2010by Phyllis BennisThe recent Taliban attacks on Kabul provide another wake-up call
about why this war in Afghanistan simply isn't going to work. It won't
bring security to Afghans. It won't turn Afghanistan into a democracy.
And it won't make us safer. In fact, the war killed more people in Afghanistan last year
than the year before-40 percent more civilians, according to the United
Nations. And the body count this year is already shaping up to be
higher than last year. That goes for U.S. troops too.
read more
The Drone Surge: Today, Tomorrow, and 2047 25 Jan 2010by Nick TurseOne moment there was the hum of a motor in the sky
above. The next, on a recent morning in Afghanistan's Helmand
province, a missile blasted a
home, killing 13 people. Days later, the same increasingly familiar
mechanical whine preceded a two-missile salvo that slammed into a
compound in Degan village in the tribal North Waziristan district of Pakistan, killing read more
Haiti is Bleeding… So too is Afghanistan, Iraq and the Arizona Desert 25 Jan 2010by Roberto RodriguezThe images from Haiti compel us to look at the mirror and ask
ourselves, if we have a heart and a face? What we see compels us to
ask if we are the human beings that we profess to be. The answer moves
us to act.
read more
Here as in Haiti? What to do When Relief Doesn't Reach Those in Need 25 Jan 2010by Danny SchechterStung by the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts and the abandonment of his health care initiative by members of Congress, and fearful of a political backlash President Obama may himself not be "too big to fail." He has now "pivoted," to use a favorite phase from the pundits, and shifted his focus to trying to fix a still deteriorating economy. He has gone from coddling the banks to turning on them with strong rhetoric that has financial stocks reeling, and progressives cheering.read more
The Seamy Side of Coal-Fired Power 25 Jan 2010by Susan GalleymoreSouth Africa has one of the heaviest
carbon footprints in the world...and the World Bank is offering a US
$5 billion loan - the biggest ever to any African entity - that
ensures its footprint becomes even heavier. The World Bank, however,
says the loan assists South Africa's electricity parastatal Eskom to
"achieve financial stability, increase generation capacity and
efficiency, and adopt a low carbon trajectory."
read more
Great Television Makes Bad Journalism: Media Failures in Haiti Coverage 25 Jan 2010by Robert JensenCNN's star anchor Anderson Cooper narrates a chaotic street scene
in Port-au-Prince.
A boy is struck in the head by a rock thrown by a looter from a roof. Cooper
helps him to the side of the road, and then realizes the boy is disoriented and
unable to get away. Laying down his digital camera (but still being filmed by
another CNN camera), Cooper picks up the boy and lifts him over a barricade to
safety, we hope.read more
Babar’s Mother in the Harvard Club 25 Jan 2010by Robert Shetterly"The hunter has killed
Babar's mother! The monkey hides, the birds fly away. Babar cries."
---- Jean de Brunhoff, The Story of Babar.
read more
Where's the Movement? 25 Jan 2010by George LakoffIn forming his administration, President Obama abandoned the movement that had begun during his campaign for deal-making and a pragmatism that hasn't worked. That movement is still possible and needed now. Here is look at what is required, and how a version of it is forming in California.We begin with this week's triple whammy. Freedom vs. The Public OptionWhich would you prefer, consumer choice or freedom? Extended coverage or freedom? Bending the cost curve or freedom?read more
Democracy in America Is a Useful Fiction 25 Jan 2010by Chris HedgesCorporate forces, long before the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission,
carried out a coup d'état in slow motion. The coup is over. We lost.
The ruling is one more judicial effort to streamline mechanisms for
corporate control. It exposes the myth of a functioning democracy and
the triumph of corporate power. But it does not significantly alter the
political landscape.read more
A Nation Cheated in the Name of Profit Must Now Rebuild 24 Jan 2010by Barbara RhineWe were eating dinner in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Jan. 12 when the earthquake struck. As Californians we knew the meaning of the distorted room with plates sliding from the table and pictures tumbling from the wall. We grabbed hands and ran outside. The building held, unlike countless others nearby, and we were uninjured.read more
The Woman Democrats Need 24 Jan 2010by Ethan PorterOn the day after Tuesday's electoral loss, the Obama administration
brought an unfamiliar face to the White House -- Elizabeth Warren, the
Harvard Law professor noted for her staunch advocacy on behalf the
middle class and fierce criticism of the bank bailouts. Perhaps the
administration will take a more aggressive approach to Wall Street,
along the lines of what Warren wants. But for Democrats to truly take
ownership of the economic crisis, Warren will need to play a more
prominent role. Not just her ideas, but the force of her personality is
needed.read more
Americans Fear Losing Affluence After Decades of Dole 24 Jan 2010by Pierre TristamPolls don't lie. If anything, they tell too many truths. But news editors present front-page results in fragments, usually picking the most sensational numbers at the expense of more telling ones. It's not malice. It's not journalism, either. It's a form of narrative herding that feeds assumptions instead of challenging them. The distortions can be fatal to good policy.read more
After the Massachusetts Massacre 24 Jan 2010by Frank RichIt was not a referendum on Barack Obama, who in every poll remains one of the most popular politicians in America. It was not a rejection of universal health care, which Massachusetts mandated (with Scott Brown’s State Senate vote) in 2006.read more
The Excesses of the Monied Interests: What Can We Do After Citizens United? 24 Jan 2010by Chris KrommThe Supreme Court decision on Citizens United
Thursday -- which greatly expanded the ability of corporations to
spend money to influence elections -- sent a collective gasp across the
public interest community.read more
Occupation in Humanitarian Clothing 24 Jan 2010by Jesse HagopianEverything you need to know about the U.S. aid
effort to assist Haiti in the wake of the catastrophic earthquake can
be summed up by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's touchdown in
Port-Au-Prince on Saturday, January 16: they shut down the airport
for three hours surrounding her arrival for "security" reasons, which
meant that no aid flights could come in during those critical hours.
read more
They Still Don’t Get It 23 Jan 2010by Bob HerbertHow loud do the alarms have to get? There is an economic emergency in the country with millions upon millions of Americans riddled with fear and anxiety as they struggle with long-term joblessness, home foreclosures, personal bankruptcies and dwindling opportunities for themselves and their children.The door is being slammed on the American dream and the politicians, including the president and his Democratic allies on Capitol Hill, seem not just helpless to deal with the crisis, but completely out of touch with the hardships that have fallen on so many.read more
Scott Horton draws tellingly on Auden and Homer in this follow-up to his remarkable piece, "The Guantanamo 'Suicides'," the story of three captives – all of them innocent men, cleared for later release – who were almost certainly murdered in a secret site in the American concentration camp in 2006, apparently for protesting prison conditions. (We examined Horton's story here.)
The men were evidently killed during "strenuous interrogation" -- i.e., they had rags stuffed down their throat while being beaten. When they died, a ludicrous story of a mutual suicide pact -- under impossible physical conditions -- was concocted by American authorities, complete with outright lies about the men being "hardcore" terrorists who killed themselves as an act of "asymmetrical warfare." The cover-up o... (continue)
Scott Horton draws tellingly on Auden and Homer in this follow-up to his remarkable piece, "The Guantanamo 'Suicides'," the story of three captives – all of them innocent men, cleared for later release – who were almost certainly murdered in a secret site in the American concentration camp in 2006, apparently for protesting prison conditions. (We examined Horton's story here.)
The men were evidently killed during "strenuous interrogation" -- i.e., they had rags stuffed down their throat while being beaten. When they died, a ludicrous story of a mutual suicide pact -- under impossible physical conditions -- was concocted by American authorities, complete with outright lies about the men being "hardcore" terrorists who killed themselves as an act of "asymmetrical warfare." The cover-up of these killings goes up to the highest levels of the U.S. government – and it continues most forcefully to this day under the Obama Administration. It is a sickening -- but most instructive -- story.
In his latest piece, Horton notes:
The three men who died in Guantánamo on the night of June 9, 2006 certainly had failings and foibles as all men do; no one will portray them as angels. To its credit, the Bush Administration even seems to have determined to set two of them free; the third had only to await resolution of diplomatic problems between the United States and his homeland. These men were not warriors engaged in some vicious military campaign against the United States, nor was there a scintilla of evidence linking them to any crime. “They were small/ And could not hope for help and no help came,” Auden writes. And what was the reaction of the world to their plight? Auden describes it perfectly, and indeed it was only to be expected: “A crowd of ordinary decent folk/ Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke.” The only difference here is the sentries, who at great risk to themselves and their families have stepped forward to place on the record exactly what they saw. They know it defies the official story; they know they may suffer retribution for it; and they know that what they saw is not conclusive in any event. It is only a fragment of the truth, which needs to be put forward and made a part of the historical record. It was offered out of respect for the dignity of the dead and out of conviction that the truth should not be suppressed, no matter how unpleasant. In the corridors of power, however, a river surges past, indifferent to all these questions, viewing them as an insignificant distraction from the troubles of a war.
Auden’s poem is a work of beauty and power. It has prophetic vision, but that vision is a nightmare. It is born from the horrors of World War II. The barbed wire of concentration camps and death camps brings the Homeric epoch up to date. Auden is not portraying the tragedies of the last war as such. He is warning of a world to come in which totalitarian societies dominate and the worth and dignity of the individual human being are lost. He warns those who stand by, decent though they may seemingly be, and say nothing–perhaps because political calculus or the chimera of national glory have blinded them to the greater moral imperatives against homicide, torture and the dissemination of lies in the cause of war.
You should read the whole piece -- and keep it constantly in mind when wading through all the earnest, endless disquisitions about the weighty affairs and political fortunes of our great and good, all of them written as if these people, our leaders, our bipartisan elites, are somehow normal, as if they are not brutally depraved and indifferent to the point of moral insanity. (show less)
Barack Obama has come out swinging following his party's rout in Massachusetts, vowing to "fight Wall Street" with a "populist" proposal whose main thrust seems to be the reinstatement of some of the common-sense regulations imposed almost 80 years ago to separate banks and investment firms. (I say "seems to be," because one can only guess what, if anything, Obama really intends to do about the matter. For despite the usual elevated rhetoric, he is, as usual, "leaving crucial details to be hashed out by Congress," as the NY Times reports. And we know how populist those paladins can be when they get down to hashing out crucial details.)
Of course, those old regulations were repealed by the bipartisan free-market extremists of the Clinton Era -- many of whom are now once more in charge ... (continue)
Barack Obama has come out swinging following his party's rout in Massachusetts, vowing to "fight Wall Street" with a "populist" proposal whose main thrust seems to be the reinstatement of some of the common-sense regulations imposed almost 80 years ago to separate banks and investment firms. (I say "seems to be," because one can only guess what, if anything, Obama really intends to do about the matter. For despite the usual elevated rhetoric, he is, as usual, "leaving crucial details to be hashed out by Congress," as the NY Times reports. And we know how populist those paladins can be when they get down to hashing out crucial details.)
Of course, those old regulations were repealed by the bipartisan free-market extremists of the Clinton Era -- many of whom are now once more in charge of national economic policy, such as Obama's main economic adviser, Larry Summers. And the fact that Obama is just now vaguely proposing such a move, a year after taking office -- and after engineering the transfer to trillions of dollars in cash, credit guarantees, bailouts and other forms of baksheesh to Wall Street -- cannot but evoke three little words that nonetheless speak volumes: horse, barn, door.
And even in the highly hypothetical likelihood that Obama was actually serious about "reining in the banks" -- that is, serious enough to actually have his staff draw up the crucial details themselves before handing the "fight" over to the banks' own bagmen in Congress -- it would be a moot point anyway, given the Supreme Court's promulgation of its Corporate Enabling Act this week. Although their ruling to remove the few existing -- and pathetic -- restraints on Big Money's domination of the electoral process is indeed bad news, one must also admire the Court's frankness in allowing this domination to step forth and stand out boldly, nakedly, no longer having to hide itself in dirty dodges and furtive tricks. (For more on the ramifications of the ruling, see this piece from Christopher Ketcham at Counterpunch.)
But even as the highways and byways and blogways of the Potomac power grid are all engrossed in the usual partisan navel-gazing, the hard, dirty work of empire goes on.* This week there was yet another killing of civilians in Afghanistan by the ever-surging NATO-led forces, including two boys, aged 11 and 15. As Reuters reports:
Over 100 people took to the streets of a small bazaar in Qarabagh district in Ghazni province, southwest of Kabul, to demonstrate, locals told Reuters by telephone.
Villagers who brought the bodies of four people to the hospital in the provincial capital of Ghazni city said three of the victims belonged to one family. Two were boys 11 and 15, villagers said.
Naturally, the American-led occupation forces said that no civilians were killed in what they called a raid "designed to capture a 'high-level Taliban commander known to direct attacks'. Unfortunately for the spinmeisters, an actual journalist, Nir Rosen, has been on the case. He provided this report to Professor As'ad AbuKhalil:
Nir Rosen sent me this from Kabul (I cite with his permission): "I met today with the parliament member from qara bagh district. He's not anti-occupation and even wants more operations but he confirmed that all the dead were innocent and were not fighters and two were quite young".
"All the dead were innocent." And two of them were children.
This is the reality when we should keep in mind as we wade through the endlessly chewed cud of petty partisan in-fighting among the court factions of our militarist empire. Every day, every night, someone's blood is being offered up on the imperial altars. That's what empire is. That's what empire does.
***
See Rome
While you were dreaming
While you wrapped your mind in silks
Bronze Steel Stone
Did their work
While you breathed the fumes
Of the oracle's fissure
Deranged the senses
Settled in soft beds
Rome
Sent agents into the streets
Hard men pinched men
Bronze Steel Stone
To eliminate execute
Discredit and destroy
See Rome
While you stood in the forum
Declaimed high words
Filled temples with fragrant smoke
Scrawled millions of learned disquisitions
Rome marched
Somewhere, in your name
Fired the village
In your name
Put steel to the belly
While you were wrapped in silks
While you grubbed
While you drank degraded waters
Drank dark, brilliant wine
While you sang, while you dreamed
For years, the all-consuming international struggle against the scourge of terrorism has been hampered at times by the fact that no one has been able to provide us with a rock-solid, comprehensive definition of the term. What, exactly, is "terrorism?" Great minds have grappled with this question in learned journals, academic symposia, think-tank fora, government entmoots, and across the commanding heights of the media. The matter is of some moment, as any person or organization to whom this ill-defined label is applied automatically becomes a target for "the path of action," to borrow the stirring phraseology of former U.S. president George W. Bush.
Indeed, some cynics have advanced the notion that the definition of terrorism has been left vague deliberately, in order to retain the deg... (continue)
For years, the all-consuming international struggle against the scourge of terrorism has been hampered at times by the fact that no one has been able to provide us with a rock-solid, comprehensive definition of the term. What, exactly, is "terrorism?" Great minds have grappled with this question in learned journals, academic symposia, think-tank fora, government entmoots, and across the commanding heights of the media. The matter is of some moment, as any person or organization to whom this ill-defined label is applied automatically becomes a target for "the path of action," to borrow the stirring phraseology of former U.S. president George W. Bush.
Indeed, some cynics have advanced the notion that the definition of terrorism has been left vague deliberately, in order to retain the degree of elasticity necessary for the term's application where and when as needed to advance one's particular political or ideological agenda. Of course, those who lack the phrenological bump of cynicism would ascribe this confusion to the artless, inherent difficulties of semantic expression all too common to our human kind. In any case, there has been, as the saying goes, much throwing about of brains on the subject, and to little effect.
But now this intractable problem has been resolved at last. And as you might expect, the man who cut this Gordian knot is one of the towering and tireless intellects of our age: Bill Clinton. To my shame, I have only recently become acquainted with his breakthrough, which was published in the December 2009 issue of Foreign Policy magazine. The chagrin I feel at my ignorance is mitigated somewhat by the fact that Mr. Clinton's brilliant formulation seems to have been largely ignored. This is no doubt because it was embedded in the vast sea of verbal gems and dazzling aperçus that the former president poured forth in his charmingly voluble fashion.
(For instance, who could fail to be dazzled by this Clintonian insight: "Tom Friedman is our most gifted journalist at actually looking at what is happening in the world and figuring out its relevance to tomorrow and figuring out a clever way to say it that sticks in your mind -- like "real men raise the gas tax." You know what I mean?" For more on this gifted journalist and his remarkable turns of phrase, see here. Mr. Clinton also lauded "big thinkers on the question of identity" like "Samuel Huntingdon, who wrote the famous book, The Clash of Civilizations." Huntingdon's book has indeed been influential, perhaps decisive, in shaping the worldview of our leading statesmen and opinion-shapers – despite the petty quibbling from second-raters, like Nobelist Amartya Sen (author of Identity and Violence), who claim that Huntingdon's magisterial wisdom is in reality somewhat lacking in intellectual heft and moral substance; some go so far as to claim his work is actually shallow, reductive, highly toxic racist tripe. But of course Mr. Clinton and our great and good know better.)
Thus primed with these sprays and sprigs of genius from the emeritus statesman, it is no surprise when we stumble onto his definitive definition of terrorism, tossed off almost casually in the midst of a disquisition on just how long the clash of civilizations known as the War on Terror might last. Cutting to the chase, as is ever his wont, Clinton nails the truth about terrorism:
Terror mean[s] killing and robbery and coercion by people who do not have state authority and go beyond national borders.
Like a bolt of sunlight breaking through a lowering cloud, Clinton's formulation floods one's brain with sudden illumination. "Killing and robbery and coercion by people who do not have state authority" – that's terrorism. Killing and robbery and coercion by people who do have state authority is, obviously, something else altogether: humanitarian intervention, perhaps, or liberation, or preservation of national security, or maintaining great-power credibility, or restoring hope, or a pre-dawn vertical insertion.
In any case, and every case, if this border-transcending activity is done by people who have state authority, then it is legitimate, it is good, it is necessary, it is noble. And even if, sometimes, on rare occasions, mistakes are made during the killing, robbing and coercing done by people who have state authority, these mistakes are only ever the result of good intentions gone awry.
So there you have it: what terrorism is depends on who does it. Naturally, there are nuances and complexities that Mr. Clinton did not go into here; it was an interview, after all, not a scholarly monograph. Obviously, the legitimacy of killing, robbing and coercing by people who have state authority is entirely dependent on the state from which that authority derives. Only those states which by their cheerful acceptance of America's benevolent guidance and abiding friendship have proven themselves worthy can legitimately exercise their authority to kill, rob and coerce. All others must forbear – or else be branded "rogue states," purveyors of "state terror," which in turn makes them eligible for "the path of action."
We are all deeply indebted to former President Clinton for bringing his legendary acumen to bear on this perplexing problem. Not for the first time do we lament the passage of the 22nd Amendment, which has prevented this acolyte of Huntingdon and Friedman from continuing to guide the ship of state. We can, however, rejoice that his own acolytes, associates, aides and advisors – and even his marriage partner! – now gird the current administration with their wise counsel. (show less)
Democrats and progressives are crying doom over the party's defeat in Massachusetts. The loss, we're told, is a blow to Barack Obama's political agenda, and so it is. They say it's a shame that yet another rightwing zealot who advocates torture is now in the Senate, and so it is. But it is precisely that agenda that led to the loss, and the shame. It is that agenda which has resurrected a rightwing party that was dead in the water, and empowered its most extreme elements.
And what is Barack Obama's agenda? What is his political program? It breaks down into three main elements: unwinnable wars, unconscionable bailouts, and unworkable, unwanted health care "reform" that forces people to further enrich some of the most despised conglomerates in the land. It is, in every way, a recipe for... (continue)
Democrats and progressives are crying doom over the party's defeat in Massachusetts. The loss, we're told, is a blow to Barack Obama's political agenda, and so it is. They say it's a shame that yet another rightwing zealot who advocates torture is now in the Senate, and so it is. But it is precisely that agenda that led to the loss, and the shame. It is that agenda which has resurrected a rightwing party that was dead in the water, and empowered its most extreme elements.
And what is Barack Obama's agenda? What is his political program? It breaks down into three main elements: unwinnable wars, unconscionable bailouts, and unworkable, unwanted health care "reform" that forces people to further enrich some of the most despised conglomerates in the land. It is, in every way, a recipe for moral, economic and political disaster. It is a gigantic anchor tied around the neck of the Democratic Party, and it will drag the whole lumbering wreck back to the bottom in short order.
It also provides a fertile breeding ground for the willful, belligerent ignorance of the Right to thrive. With such an egregiously stupid and destructive agenda at work in the White House, opponents need only say that they are against it, and they are guaranteed a wide following. Who would not be against unwinnable war, unconscionable bailouts and unworkable boondoggles serving rapacious elites? The actual positions held by these opponents – the actual policies they will pursue once in power – are given little scrutiny in such circumstances. The opponent represents change from a hated status quo – and that's enough. Later, when their odious positions come to light, it is too late.
Where have we seen this dynamic at work before? Oh yes, it was way back in November 2008. Barack Obama represented change from the hated status quo, from the agenda of the ruling Republican party. And what was that agenda? Why, unwinnable wars, unconscionable bailouts and the assiduous service of rapacious elites. The actual positions held by Obama – the actual policies that he would pursue once in power – were given little scrutiny. Except by a precious few – such as Arthur Silber, who long ago warned that Obama's election would be ruinous for genuine progressive change, that he would merely put a new gloss on the old corruption while disarming dissent from 'progressives,' who would feel bound to support the president against his rightwing enemies – even if it meant "holding their noses" and supporting bad policies like the health care reform bill or the Afghan surge.
Now it is obvious to all that Obama's core agenda is the same as Bush's: maintaining the elitist, militarist, corporatist system in all its essential elements. The "War on Terror" goes on, expanding into new lands. Torture and murder are still countenanced and concealed, in concentration camps and secret sites that are still in operation. All of Bush's most egregious assertions of authoritarian power are embraced and defended in court. Wall Street is rewarded, not regulated for its vast crimes. The legislative architect and champion of one of the most regressive, punitive, draconian acts of class war in our time – the Bankruptcy Bill, that atom bomb dropped on working people, the sick, the old and the young – has been plucked from deserved obscurity and made Vice President of the United States. A grotesquely expensive, unjust and dysfunctional health care system is not only left intact by "reform," it is given millions of new, captive customers, and more public money to guarantee its profits.
Once again, the question arises: Is this a winning agenda?
It is not just Obama's agenda, of course. It is the agenda of the Democratic Party: war, empire, and corporate profit über alles. Is this really worth defending, even with a held nose? Yet progressives and liberals will continue to insist that, bad as it is, we've got to keep supporting the Democratic Party – because there is no alternative, because otherwise, Tea Party torture mavens like Scott Brown or Sarah Palin will get elected.
But as we've already noted above, it is the Democratic agenda itself that is opening the door for extremist opponents, who then exploit the genuine dissatisfaction and genuine suffering caused by that agenda. The fact that these opponents also support the same core agenda means that the nation will keep ping-ponging back and forth, with an electorate hungry for change desperately chasing anyone who promises it – only to rush back in the other direction when the 'change agent' proves to be just another stooge of the status quo.
This destructive, corrosive dynamic – this ever-worsening death spiral – is what progressives are actually supporting and enabling when they "hold their noses" to support Democrats. The Republicans and Democrats are now simply two factions of the same party – the party of war and greed. To support one faction, no matter what, with held noses or open arms, in such a locked system only perpetuates and exacerbates its worst elements.
Oh, but there's no choice, we are told, with earnest handwringing, by our leading progressives. Third parties are not viable in our system, we are informed by our savvy progressive realists; there can be no effective political movement outside the two main parties. Indeed, no less than Digby herself has declared that the only alternative to working with this closed system (which means, in practice, supporting the Democratic Party) is violent revolution: "Pick up your muskets, kids, or STFU."
And so this is what we've come to. This is the "progressive" answer to any genuine, non-violent rejection of the Democratic faction's agenda of war and greed: "Shut the fuck up." My, wouldn't Martin Luther King Jr. be delighted with that? Wouldn't Thomas Jefferson revel in such delicious eloquence, such deep thought?
Look, I know it's not easy. I was born and raised a Yellow Dawg Democrat myself, and remained one for most of my life. I know what it's like to be hardwired for supporting Democrats, come hell or high water, giving them every benefit of the doubt, turning a blind eye here, making a furious rationalization there. These tribal loyalties are very difficult to lay down; it really can feel like turning your back on your family. And of course the belligerent, bellicose, willfully ignorant Republicans are loathsome and dangerous.
But there comes a time when you must face the truth – or be lost to truth forever. There comes a time to recognize that the Democratic Party and Republican Party are part of the same corrupted entity. There comes a time to recognize that the Democratic Party's agenda is not only ruinous in itself, unworthy of the support of anyone who cares about justice, peace, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – it is also empowering those very same loathsome and dangerous Republicans. There comes a time for even the most partisan tribalist (and I have been one) to accept the hard judgment of reality: that the Democratic Party is part of the problem, not the solution.
To say that there is no alternative to supporting this locked-in, closed-off, two-faction system of war and greed is an act of craven surrender to that system. To dismiss all hope for forging genuine alternatives to this system -- whether these be other political parties or more general movements aiming not for political power but for broader changes in social consciousness -- is a counsel of despair. It condemns us, and the world, to yet another generation of violence, chaos and corruption, another long, long journey away from the light. It is, as noted above, a recipe for disaster in every way.
But if you want more Scott Browns in power, then by all means, keep pushing that Democratic agenda. You'll soon have Scott Browns and Sarah Palins running out of your ears. (show less)
With international turf battles and diplomatic spats slowing the distribution of food, water, medicine and security in Haiti, the stricken people are now fleeing to the countryside. This may actually help the situation in one sense, as it might be easier to get aid to more people in unruined areas; however, it will also put a great strain on regions which are themselves mired in poverty and deprivation, and lacking in infrastructure.
Meanwhile, in Port-au-Prince, as aid begins to trickle in, anguished medical professionals are lamenting the multitude of unnecessary deaths that the bureaucratic bottlenecks have caused. As the Guardian reports:
Médecins sans Frontières says confusion over who is running the relief effort – the US which controls the main airport, or the UN which says ... (continue)
With international turf battles and diplomatic spats slowing the distribution of food, water, medicine and security in Haiti, the stricken people are now fleeing to the countryside. This may actually help the situation in one sense, as it might be easier to get aid to more people in unruined areas; however, it will also put a great strain on regions which are themselves mired in poverty and deprivation, and lacking in infrastructure.
Meanwhile, in Port-au-Prince, as aid begins to trickle in, anguished medical professionals are lamenting the multitude of unnecessary deaths that the bureaucratic bottlenecks have caused. As the Guardian reports:
Médecins sans Frontières says confusion over who is running the relief effort – the US which controls the main airport, or the UN which says it is overseeing distribution – may have led to hundreds of avoidable deaths because it has not been able to get essential supplies in to the country. "The co-ordination ... is not existing or not functioning at this stage," said Benoit Leduc, MSF's operations manager in Port-au-Prince. "I don't really know who is in charge. Between the two systems (the US and the UN) I don't think there is smooth liaison [over] who decides what."
...There has been criticism from some aid agencies of the Americans for giving priority to military flights at the airport while planes carrying relief supplies are unable to land. MSF has had five planes turned back from the airport in recent days, three carrying essential medical supplies and two with expert surgical personnel.
"We lost 48 hours because of these access problems," said Leduc. "Of course it is a small airport, but this is clearly a matter of defining priorities."
Asked how many avoidable deaths had been caused by the delays, he said that hundreds of critical lifesaving operations had been delayed by two days.
"We are talking about septicaemia. The morgues in the hospitals are full," he said.
... John O'Shea, the head of the Irish medical charity, Goal, [said], "there is only one thing stopping a massive and prodigious aid effort being rolled out and that is leadership and co-ordination. You have neither in Haiti at the moment."
The American government response has largely been a militarized one. But the celebrated American war machine -- whose annual budgets could lift millions out of poverty, deprivation and lack of infrastructure every year -- seems too musclebound to respond with the precision and flexibility that the situation requires. No doubt most of the individuals involved in the effort are working tirelessly; but a system designed for war, for death, destruction and domination, will never be a fit instrument for humanitarian relief.
The chief face of the United States in Haiti right now are highly-armed veterans of imperial wars, trained for conquest and occupation -- and many of them strained by multiple tours. And while many Haitians will greet the sight of any organized force coming to help them, America's long and ugly history with Haiti is not forgotten either, as Ed Pilkington notes:
The Haitian in whose house in Port-au-Prince we are staying – a prominent businessman and generally very pro-America – keeps a cherished machete on his wall. It was used, he explained to me one night, by his grandfather to attack US soldiers during the 1915-1934 American occupation of his country.
Writing on Monday, Pilkington also detailed the fatal slowness of the musclebound relief effort:
Day seven of the catastrophe, yet wherever we go we are still surrounded by crowds of people living on the streets pleading with us for water. A few miles away at the airport huge quantities of supplies are stacked high in the sun. Under a deal finalised between the heads of relevant parties on Sunday night, US troops will be responsible for securing the incoming supplies at the airport, and then moving them to four central distribution hubs. One of those hubs is at the national football stadium in downtown Port-au-Prince and another at a golf course near the US embassy.
That will free up troops from the UN peacekeeping force in Haiti, so the official line goes, to take charge of the next stage of the process – getting the aid out of the central hubs and to the neighbourhoods. For that purpose the UN has pinpointed 14 distribution locations where it, together with aid groups, will hand out the goods.
The plan sounds neat, thoroughly thought-out, fool-proof. There is only one problem: it is several days late.
A vast, permanent, completely mobile, well-trained, civilian rescue and restoration corps could easily be maintained by the United States, at the merest fraction of what it now pays out for its regular "war supplements" -- never mind the obscenely bloated 'regular' Pentagon budget. (And yes, such a corps would have a security component, made up of officers who have been trained to deal with suffering people in extremity -- not those trained to inflict suffering and extremity on people.)
This seems like a somewhat better use of public money than, say, waging endless wars to "project dominance" to the four corners of the earth, or bailing out a kleptoplutocracy that has wrecked the global economy and ruined the lives of millions around the world -- or even enriching pharmaceutical and med-biz conglomerates beyond the dreams of avarice just to claim you have passed health care "reform" without actually reforming an insanely expensive and unjust system. But like Dennis Kuchinich's idea of a "Department of Peace," any notion of a full-scale rescue corps would be hooted off the national stage by the super-savvy serious "realists" who rule our discourse, and our lives.
So we will go on as we are now. When natural disasters strike -- and they will be striking more often, and with deadlier effect, on our crowded, corroded planet in the years to come -- we will simply follow the same old pattern: launching ad hoc, inept attempts to retool a few bits and pieces of the lumbering War Machine for temporary humanitarian service. And once again, hundreds, if not thousands, of stricken people will die needless deaths.
NOTE: As noted here the other day, two good venues for giving aid to Haiti are Partners in Health and the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund, both of whom have been working in Haiti for many years. (show less)
If you really want to know the truth about the sickening wretches who run our country, if you want to know exactly what they will commit, what they will command, what they will countenance and conceal, all the way to the very top of the blood-greased pole of the Oval Office, then read every word of this astounding piece by Scott Horton in the new edition of Harper's: "The Guantanomo 'Suicides.'"
This is a full-length article which the magazine is making available for free on its website. In it, Horton unfolds the story of three men, almost certainly innocent, who were almost certainly murdered by American "interrogators" at a secret site in the American concentration camp in Guantanomo Bay, Cuba, on the night of June 9, 2006 -- an atrocity that set off a long, complex chain of deceit t... (continue)
If you really want to know the truth about the sickening wretches who run our country, if you want to know exactly what they will commit, what they will command, what they will countenance and conceal, all the way to the very top of the blood-greased pole of the Oval Office, then read every word of this astounding piece by Scott Horton in the new edition of Harper's: "The Guantanomo 'Suicides.'"
This is a full-length article which the magazine is making available for free on its website. In it, Horton unfolds the story of three men, almost certainly innocent, who were almost certainly murdered by American "interrogators" at a secret site in the American concentration camp in Guantanomo Bay, Cuba, on the night of June 9, 2006 -- an atrocity that set off a long, complex chain of deceit that continues to this day.
These killings were not only declared "suicides" by Washington; it was even claimed that the deaths were deliberate acts of "asymmetrical warfare" carried out by hardened terrorists -- "fanatics like the Nazis, Hitlerites, or the Ku Klux Klan, the people they tried at Nuremberg," as a Pentagon mouthpiece told the press. Yet as Horton notes, all three men had been put on "a list of prisoners to be sent home." One of them was only a few weeks away from his formal release. There was no credible evidence of terrorist connections against any of the men, two of whom had been sold into captivity by bounty hunters.
Yet these prisoners did have one black mark against them. They had been taking part in hunger strikes to protest conditions in the concentration camp. They were troublemakers, loudmouths. They wouldn't break. They had lawyers.
And so, according to a mass of credible evidence -- from heavily redacted official reports pieced together by the students and faculty at the law school of Seton Hall University, and from the courageous testimony of soldiers who had been on duty that night -- these three men, Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi and Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani, were taken to a "black site" at Gitmo known as "Camp No." All regular military personnel were forbidden to enter the site, or even acknowledge its existence -- although some soldiers later testified to hearing screams from behind Camp No's concertina wire. Eyewitnesses say that three prisoners were taken, one by one, in a white van to Camp No on the night of June 9; and later, just before the alarm went up about the "suicides," the van returned and unloaded a mysterious cargo.
As Horton notes, the official accounts of the "suicides" are risible:
According to the NCIS, each prisoner had fashioned a noose from torn sheets and T-shirts and tied it to the top of his cell’s eight-foot-high steel-mesh wall. Each prisoner was able somehow to bind his own hands, and, in at least one case, his own feet, then stuff more rags deep down into his own throat. We are then asked to believe that each prisoner, even as he was choking on those rags, climbed up on his washbasin, slipped his head through the noose, tightened it, and leapt from the washbasin to hang until he asphyxiated.
[Yes, that's the same NCIS that has its noble adventures in the pursuit of truth and justice celebrated each week in a top-rated TV show.]
What really happened to the men? One clue comes from yet another hunger striker, Shaker Aamer, who was "interrogated" that same night, but managed to survive:
He described the events in detail to his lawyer, Zachary Katznelson, who was permitted to speak to him several weeks later. Katznelson recorded every detail of Aamer’s account and filed an affidavit with the federal district court in Washington, setting it out:
On June 9th, 2006, [Aamer] was beaten for two and a half hours straight. Seven naval military police participated in his beating. Mr. Aamer stated he had refused to provide a retina scan and fingerprints. He reported to me that he was strapped to a chair, fully restrained at the head, arms and legs. The MPs inflicted so much pain, Mr. Aamer said he thought he was going to die. The MPs pressed on pressure points all over his body: his temples, just under his jawline, in the hollow beneath his ears. They choked him. They bent his nose repeatedly so hard to the side he thought it would break. They pinched his thighs and feet constantly. They gouged his eyes. They held his eyes open and shined a mag-lite in them for minutes on end, generating intense heat. They bent his fingers until he screamed. When he screamed, they cut off his airway, then put a mask on him so he could not cry out.
The treatment Aamer describes is noteworthy because it produces excruciating pain without leaving lasting marks. Still, the fact that Aamer had his airway cut off and a mask put over his face “so he could not cry out” is alarming. This is the same technique that appears to have been used on the three deceased prisoners.
Aamer, who wife is British, continues to be held in the concentration camp, despite the UK government's request for his release, and despite the fact that there is "no suggestion that the Americans intend to charge him before a military commission, or in a federal criminal court, [or] indeed, [that] they have [any] meaningful evidence linking him to any crime." The only dangerous thing about Aamer is what he knows, and what he can tell.
Horton examines the official cover-up of these deaths in great detail. The deliberate and systematic deceptions began in the first hours after the killings -- and are still going on, carried forward with great guile by the Obama Administration. All along the way, evidence was destroyed, records were falsified, eyewitnesses were ignored -- or threatened. When the whistleblowers took the case to the new Administration in early 2009, hoping for a fairer hearing from the progressive young president, they were fobbed off with earnest promises of a thorough investigation by a team which included a close crony and former law partner of new Attorney General Eric Holder. But after months of inaction, the probe was suddenly closed, with government officials refusing to explain the decision.
Perhaps the most gruesome act in this bipartisan cover-up was the mutilation of the dead men's bodies. All three of them had their neck organs removed by military pathologists in the earliest stages of the investigation. As Horton notes:
An odd admission, given that these are the very body parts—the larynx, the hyoid bone, and the thyroid cartilage—that would have been essential to determining whether death occurred from hanging, from strangulation, or from choking. These parts remained missing when the men’s families finally received their bodies.
This mutilation -- "the removal of the structure that would have been the natural focus of the autopsy" -- prevented the families from carrying out proper forensic examinations of their own. Their request for the return of their children's body parts went unanswered.
All they are left with -- all we are left with -- are mutilated corpses and lies.
There is much more in Horton's piece, and again, I urge you to read it in full. Hold it in your mind the next time some sanctimonious official begins extolling the exceptional virtues of our shining city on the hill. And remember -- always remember -- that this militarist system of lawless violence and brutal domination is what our greasy pole-climbers, of whatever political stripe, want to have; it is what they want to wield. It is precisely this kind of power -- of life and death, of sway and command -- that they yearn for, fight for, cheat for and lie for in the bizarre and hollow rituals that our empire stages every four years. (show less)
One can almost feel the disappointment amongst Western media mavens that earthquake-stricken Haitians have not, in fact, degenerated into packs of feral animals tearing each other to pieces. Day after day, every single possible isolated incident of panic, anger, "looting" (as the removal of provisions from ruined stores by starving people is called) and vigilantism has been highlighted -- and often headlined -- by the most "respectable" news sources. [As you can imagine, Britain's truly vile -- but eminently "respectable" and politically pampered -- Daily Mail is a leader in this odious field, with stories about "slum warlords" leading gangs of violent "pillagers."]
And yet the prophesied riots never seem to materialize. Outlets such as the New York Times are moved to remark, with seem... (continue)
One can almost feel the disappointment amongst Western media mavens that earthquake-stricken Haitians have not, in fact, degenerated into packs of feral animals tearing each other to pieces. Day after day, every single possible isolated incident of panic, anger, "looting" (as the removal of provisions from ruined stores by starving people is called) and vigilantism has been highlighted -- and often headlined -- by the most "respectable" news sources. [As you can imagine, Britain's truly vile -- but eminently "respectable" and politically pampered -- Daily Mail is a leader in this odious field, with stories about "slum warlords" leading gangs of violent "pillagers."]
And yet the prophesied riots never seem to materialize. Outlets such as the New York Times are moved to remark, with seeming wonder, "Amid Desperation, Mood Stays Calm," as the paper noted in one sub-headline on its website on Monday. Astonishingly, the Haitians are acting almost like real human beings in any vast disaster: trying to stay alive, trying to care for loved ones, trying to help strangers, trying to get through the worst and reach a place where they can begin to rebuild their lives and communities. The media have sought strenuously to revive the bogus narrative that they foisted on the destruction of New Orleans: "Black Folk Gone Wild!" But thus far, they have been palpably disappointed.
Of course, there is anger among the stricken populace. Anger at the slowness of relief efforts, and anger at the utter collapse of the "government" which was installed by the American-backed coup in 2004. The "president" of this regime has been conspicuous by his absence in the crisis, neither speaking to the people by radio nor appearing among them. This may change now that sufficient American troops have arrived to bolster his confidence, but it has been a striking example of the vast disconnection between the implanted government and the people. The anger now submerged by the need for immediate relief and recovery may emerge with strong force later -- especially if the American-led restoration efforts simply return the nation to the strangulation of the pre-quake status quo.
Barack Obama's cynicism in placing George W. Bush, of all people, as a figurehead of America's "abiding commitment" to Haiti is jaw-dropping. Not only did Bush preside over one of the most colossally inept and destructive responses to a natural disaster in modern times -- while also inflicting the unnatural disaster of mass murder in Iraq -- it was his administration that engineered the latest coup in Haiti, saddling it with an unpopular, powerless government that simply collapsed in the earthquake. Choosing Bush to spearhead relief for Haiti is like hiring Ted Bundy as a grief counselor for murder victims.
Bush's co-figurehead, Bill Clinton, is hardly a better choice, of course. As we noted here earlier this week, it was Clinton who imposed a brutal economic and political stranglehold on Haiti as his "condition" for restoring the democratically elected government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1996 -- after Aristide had been ousted earlier in a coup engineered by the first President George Bush.
Both of these ex-presidents bear great responsibility for creating the conditions of dire poverty, ill health, corruption and political instability that have made the effects of this natural disaster so much worse. Yet these are the men whom Obama has made the public face of America's humanitarian mission.
In the short run, I suppose it doesn't matter. Obama was bound to pick some hidebound Establishment figure anyway, so why not these two? Maybe Bush and Clinton can squeeze a few extra relief dollars out of the bloated plutocrats they run with -- and Clinton can also work the celebs who still like to bask in the afterglow of his former imperial power. If the prominence they have gained by immoral means can provide immediate relief to those whom they have so grievously afflicted, then so be it.
But in the long run, their selection as the symbols of America's altruistic concern for Haiti's wellbeing certainly does not augur well for any genuine reconfiguration of Haiti's crippling political and economic arrangements. On the contrary; it signals pretty clearly that the imperial gaming of Haiti will go on.(show less)
King for a Day 18 Jan 2010chris@chris-floyd.com (Chris Floyd) To mark the day set aside to honor that cuddly, kindly American hero of yesteryear, we offer this paraphrase from Woody Allen:
"If Martin Luther King Jr. came back and saw the things being done in his name, he'd never stop throwing up."
Arthur Silber has surfaced again after a long silence due to chronic -- and worsening -- illness. As you can see from this post, his health remains precarious, and he is need of assistance -- not only for the bare modicum of health care that he might be able to eke out with a few extra dollars, but also just to survive on a daily basis: buying food, paying rent, etc.
Silber has no insurance, and no other means of support other than what he is given for the writing on his blog. And readers here know that his writing and insights are incomparable, and that Silber gives us a deep and bracing viewpoint that we sorely need. [Just check out the list of "Major Essays" on his site -- or take a random stroll through his archives -- and you will see what I mean.]
Arthur Silber has surfaced again after a long silence due to chronic -- and worsening -- illness. As you can see from this post, his health remains precarious, and he is need of assistance -- not only for the bare modicum of health care that he might be able to eke out with a few extra dollars, but also just to survive on a daily basis: buying food, paying rent, etc.
Silber has no insurance, and no other means of support other than what he is given for the writing on his blog. And readers here know that his writing and insights are incomparable, and that Silber gives us a deep and bracing viewpoint that we sorely need. [Just check out the list of "Major Essays" on his site -- or take a random stroll through his archives -- and you will see what I mean.]
So if you have anything to give, please consider throwing a bit of it Silber's way, as soon as you can. (show less)
Via Mark Crispin Miller, the Center for Constitutional Rights points to some venues for getting help to the people of Haiti: Partners in Health and the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund. You can find several more in this listing from the New York Times.
I.
The relentlessly maintained, deliberately inflicted political and economic ruin of Haiti has a direct bearing on the amount of death and devastation that the country is suffering today after the earthquake. It will also greatly cripple any recovery from this natural disaster. As detailed below, Washington's rapacious economic policies have destroyed all attempts to build a sustainable economy in Haiti, driving people off the land and from small communities into packed, dangerous, unhealthy shantytowns, to try to e... (continue)
(UPDATED BELOW)
Via Mark Crispin Miller, the Center for Constitutional Rights points to some venues for getting help to the people of Haiti: Partners in Health and the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund. You can find several more in this listing from the New York Times.
I.
The relentlessly maintained, deliberately inflicted political and economic ruin of Haiti has a direct bearing on the amount of death and devastation that the country is suffering today after the earthquake. It will also greatly cripple any recovery from this natural disaster. As detailed below, Washington's rapacious economic policies have destroyed all attempts to build a sustainable economy in Haiti, driving people off the land and from small communities into packed, dangerous, unhealthy shantytowns, to try to eke out a meager existence in the sweatshops owned by Western elites and their local cronies. All attempts at changing a manifestly unjust society have been ruthlessly suppressed by the direct or collateral hand of Western elites.
The result? Millions of people -- weakened by hunger, deprivation, malnutrition, disease -- living jammed together in precarious, substandard housing. A lack of the physical, financial and civic infrastructure needed to support a decent life in ordinary times -- and to provide proper assistance, and a strong framework for rebuilding, when disaster strikes. Even a far lesser earthquake than the one that struck this week would have caused an unconscionable amount of unnecessary suffering in a nation that has been as ruthlessly and deliberately throttled as Haiti.
With Hurricane Katrina, we saw how callously and unjustly America's elites reacted to the destruction of one of their own cities. Politically connected Mississippi millionaires got prompt and copious assistance -- while many New Orleans natives are still refugees, scattered across the country years after the flood. And this in a nation in which the infrastructures -- though rapidly rotting from the corruption of greed and militarism -- are still strong. What hope then for Haiti?
Yes, there will now be a great outpouring of immediate aid, as there always is after any spectacular disaster. And of course, this is laudable, and I encourage anyone who can to contribute what they can to these efforts. But unless there is a sea-change in American policy, unless there finally comes an end to the curse that has been laid on Haiti -- not by God, or by the Devil, but by the hard hearts of elites following blindly in the cruel traditions of their predecessors -- then this flurry of caring and attention will soon give way again, as it has always done, to callous disregard, brutal repression and inhumane exploitation.
The tale of these cruel traditions -- and the "continuity" with them that Obama has already displayed -- does not augur well for such a change. But as that wise man, Edsel Floyd, always says, we live in hope and die in despair. And such a hope for Haiti is worth holding onto, and working toward.
At the same time, hope must not be blind; you have to acknowledge the grim realities in order to know just what you're up against. So let's take a long, hard look.
II.
Scant hours after the earthquake hit, televangelist Pat Robertson was on the air, declaiming to his millions of viewers that the reason Haiti was stricken by this disaster -- and has been suffering grievously for 200 years -- is because the Haitians "swore a pact with the devil" in order to win their freedom from their French colonial overlords the early 1800s.
And while such vomitious expulsions are to be expected from this well-wadded, politically-wired, virulently extremist mullah (once aptly described in these pages as a "dictator-coddler, blood diamond merchant, Jew-hater and milkshake shiller") this time there is a very tiny grain of truth to be found in the splattered mass of Robertson's upchucking. The Haitians have indeed been cursed for 200 years, and the curse does indeed go back to their liberation. But pace Robertson, the source of this curse is not metaphysical. As I noted in a piece written in 2004:
Exactly two hundred years ago, Haitian slaves overthrew their French masters -- the first successful national slave revolt in history. What Spartacus dreamed of doing, the Haitian slaves actually accomplished. It was a tremendous achievement -- and the white West has never forgiven them for it.
In order to win international recognition for their new country, Haiti was forced to pay "reparations" to the slaveowners -- a crushing burden of debt they were still paying off at the end of the 19th century. The United States, which refused to recognize the country for more than 60 years, invaded Haiti in 1915, primarily to open it up to "foreign ownership of local concerns." After 19 years of occupation, the Americans backed a series of bloodthirsty dictatorships to protect these "foreign owners." And still it goes on.
Indeed it does. The 2004 piece detailed Washington's latest long, bipartisan squeeze play on Haiti, which culminated in a coup engineered by the Bush Administration -- the second time in which a U.S. president named George Bush had ousted the democratically-elected Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from office. It is tale worth telling again:
Although the [2004] Haiti coup was widely portrayed as an irresistible upsurge of popular discontent, it was of course the result of years of hard work by Bush's dedicated corrupters of democracy, as William Bowles of Information Clearinghouse reports. Bushist bagmen funded the political opposition to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, smuggled guns to exiled Haitian warlords, and carried out a relentless strangulation of the county, cutting off long-promised financial and structural aid to one of the poorest nations on earth until food prices were soaring, unemployment spiked to 70 percent, and the broken-backed government lost control of society to armed gangs of criminals, fanatics and the merely desperate. Meanwhile, Haiti was forced to pay $2 million a month on debts run up by the murderous (U.S.-backed) dictatorships that had ruled the island since the American military occupation of 1915-1934. ...
The ostensible reason for Bush's deadly squeeze play was Haiti's disputed elections in 2000. That vote, only the nation's third free election in 200 years, was indeed marred by reports of irregularities -- although these were not nearly as egregious as the well-documented hijinks which saw a certain runner-up candidate appointed to the White House that same year. There was no question that Aristide and his party received an overwhelming majority of legitimate votes; however, out of the 7,500 offices up for grabs, election observers did find that seven senate results seemed of dodgy provenance.
So what happened? The seven disputed senators resigned. New elections for the seats were called, but the opposition - two elitist factions financed by Washington's favorite engines of subversion, the Orwellian-monikered "National Endowment for Democracy" and "International Republican Institute" -- refused to take part. The government broke down because the legislature couldn't convene. When Bush came in, he tightened the screws of the international blockade of the island, insisting that $500 million in desperately needed aid could not be released unless the opposition participated in new elections - while he was simultaneously paying the opposition not to participate.
The ultimate aim of this brutal pretzel logic was to grind Haiti's destitute people further into the ground and destroy Aristide's ability to govern. His real crime, of course, was not the Florida-style election follies or the reported "tyranny." ... No, Aristide did something far worse than stuffing ballots or killing people -- he tried to raise the minimum wage, to the princely sum of two dollars a day. This move outraged the American corporations -- and their local lackeys -- who have for generations used Haiti as a pool of dirt-cheap labor and sky-high profits. It was the last straw for the elitist factions, one of which is actually led by an American citizen and former Reagan-Bush appointee, manufacturing tycoon Andy Apaid.
Apaid was the point man for the rapacious Reagan-Bush "market reform" drive in Haiti. Of course, "reform," in the degraded jargon of the privateers, means exposing even the very means of survival and sustenance to the ravages of powerful corporate interests. For example, the Reagan-Bush plan forced Haiti to lift import tariffs on rice, which had long been a locally-grown staple. Then they flooded Haiti with heavily subsidized American rice, destroying the local market and throwing thousands of self-sufficient farmers out of work. With a now-captive market, the American companies jacked up their prices, spreading ruin and hunger throughout Haitian society. The jobless farmers provided new fodder for the factories of Apaid and his cronies. Reagan and Bush chipped in by abolishing taxes for American corporations who set up Haitian sweatshops. The result was a precipitous drop in wages - and life expectancy. Aristide's first election in 1990 threatened these cozy arrangements, so he was duly ejected by a military coup, with Bush I's not-so-tacit connivance.
But as we said, the latest round of punishment for Haiti was a thoroughly bipartisan affair:
Bill Clinton restored Aristide to office in 1994 - but only after forcing him to agree to, yes, "market reforms." In fact, it was Clinton, the privateers' pal, who instigated the post-election aid embargo that Bush II used to such devastating effect. Aristide's chief failing as a leader was his attempt to live up to this bipartisan blackmail. As in every other nation that's come under the IMF whip, Haiti's already-fragile economy collapsed. Bush family retainers like Apaid then shoved the country into total chaos, making it easy prey for the warlords whom Bush operatives - many of them old Iran-Contra hands - supplied with arms through the Dominican Republic, the Boston Globe reports. ...
When Aristide agreed to a deal, brokered by his fellow leaders in the Caribbean, that would have effectively ceded power to the Bush-funded opposition but at least preserved the lineaments of Haitian democracy - Apaid and the boys turned down the offer, with the blessing of their paymasters in Washington, who suddenly claimed they had no influence over their recalcitrant hired hands. ...
Instead, Aristide was told by armed American gunmen that if he didn't resign, he would be left to die at the hands of the rebels. Then he was bundled onto a waiting plane and dumped in the middle of Africa. Within hours, the Bush-backed terrorists were marching openly through Port-au-Prince, executing Aristide's supporters.
Guess they won't be asking for two dollars a day now, eh? Mission accomplished!
III.
Of course, all of that happened in the bad old days, before Barack Obama ushered us into a new, "post-racial" era. Surely this man of vision and compassion, himself a scion of Africa, would at last put an end to Haiti's punishment for rising up against its white masters.
But it was not to be. As noted here last year, in "Cry, the Unforgiven Country":
Obama and his "superstar" secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, are loudly championing the latest egregious, brutal farce that Washington and the West have foisted upon the uppity natives of Haiti.
Senatorial elections held this month by the government imposed on Haiti after the U.S.-backed coup of 2004 ... produced a turnout of less than 10 percent of eligible voters: a result that mocks any notion of a popular, legitimate democracy. But this is not because the Haitians are so lazy and disinterested that they couldn't be bothered to vote. Nor that they are so satisfied with the benevolent, paternal care of their American-appointed masters that they saw no need to let silly electoral contests trouble their bucolic life.
No, the 90 percent refusal rate was in fact a massive protest action, driven chiefly by the fact that the American-backed government would not allow the most popular party -- the party of the government ousted by the 2004 coup -- to run a slate of candidates in the election. By clerkly hook and bureaucratic crook, Haiti's election overseers banned the Fanmi Lavalas slate back in February. At that moment, the April elections became a dead letter, a meaningless farce -- yet another cruel joke played on the people of Haiti.
How did the enlightened progressives of the new American administration respond? John Caruso reports:
CLINTON: The U.S. removed a military dictatorship in 1995, clearing the way for democracy. And after several years of political disputes, common in any country making a transition, Haiti began to see progress. And the national and presidential elections in 2006 really moved Haiti’s democracy forward. What the president and the prime minister are seeking is to maintain a strong commitment to democratic governance which will take another step forward with elections for the senate on Sunday.
To translate from the vulgar Clintonian dialect: 1) "political disputes" refers to the overwhelmingly popular presidency of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, which was "disputed" (and continually undermined) by the U.S. and its fifth column in Haiti; 2) Haiti "began to see progress" thanks to the U.S.-backed coup of Aristide in 2004; and 3) the 2006 elections that "really moved Haiti's democracy forward" excluded both Aristide and FL's preferred candidate in his stead (Father Gerard Jean-Juste, thrown in prison on invented charges by the U.S.-backed government in order to prevent him from running), resulting in the ascension of Rene Preval—who understands clearly who's the boss, and therefore merits a pat on the head from Clinton.
Which brings us to today's senatorial elections, in which the U.S./Haitian "strong commitment to democratic governance...will take another step forward" via the calculated suppression of the majority party's ability to run a slate of candidates...
So the centuries-long U.S. project of democracy prevention in Haiti is still going swimmingly. And anyone who feared that our first black president might be less sympathetic to the need to smash the democratic aspirations of the first free black nation in the hemisphere can rest assured: Obama will never let race — or anything else — stop him from doing the empire's dirty work.
It is certain such dirty work will soon be afoot once more -- and we must fight it, call attention to it, and not let Haiti disappear in the imperial shadow yet again. But at this moment, the most pressing concern is the human suffering in Haiti. So again, do look into the relief efforts noted above, or any others you might prefer.
UPDATE: John Caruso has more background on one of the relief agencies recommended above, plus more historical context for Haiti's suffering, including this devastating piece by Noam Chomsky. (show less)
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