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Today's
Stories
March 29, 2004
Kathy Kelly
Crossing Lines
March 27 / 28, 2004
Jennifer Loewenstein
A
Journey to Rafah
Jeffrey St. Clair
Empire of the Locusts
Gary Leupp
The Yassin Assassination: Prelude to an Attack on Syria
William A. Cook
The Yassin Assassination: a Monstrous Insanity Blessed by the
US
Faheem Hussain
Some Thoughts on Waziristan: Once and Always a Colonial Army
Elaine Cassel
Is Playing Paintball Terrorism?
Larry Birns / Jessica
Leight
Disturbing Signals: Kerry and Latin America
John Ross
Bush Tells the World: "Drop Dead"
John Eskow
A Memo to Karl Rove from the Hollywood Caucus
Alan Maass
Who Are the Real Terrorists?
Dave Lindorff
Spineless of US Journalists
Joe Bageant
Howling in the Belly of the Confederacy
Dave Zirin
Reasonable Doubt: Why Barry Bonds is Not on Steroids
Craig Waggoner
Who Would Mel's Jesus Nuke?
The Kerry Quandry
Joel Wendland
Marxists
for Kerry
Josh Frank
Scary,
Scary John Kerry
Matt Vidal
Spoilers, Electability and the Poverty of American Democracy
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Hamod, Guthrie, Davies and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Say a Little Prayer
March 26, 2004
Christopher Brauchli
There's
a Chill Over the Country
Robert Fisk
The Man Who Knew Too Much: the Ordeal
of Mordechai Vanunu
Joe DeRaymond
Democracy in El Salvador? Think Again
Mike Whitney
Lessons on Apartheid from Ariel Sharon
Mickey Z.
Somalia and Iraq: Looking Back and Ahead
Chris Floyd
The Pentagon Archipelago
CounterPunch Photo Wire
Cheney's Close Shave?
John Breneman
Bush's Comic Bomb
Website of the Day
Dick
is a Killer
March 25, 2004
Lee Sustar
Who
is to Blame for Lost Jobs?
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Offshore Banking Centers
Roger Burbach
Lula vs. the IMF: Brazil Begins
to Throw Off the Austerity Planners
Jimmer Endres
Elections Without Politics: The Military Budget Is Not an "Issue"
Larry Tuttle
Acting in Your Name: Identity Theft and Public Interest Groups
Toni Solo
Misreporting Venezuela
Dan Bacher
A Memorial Wall for Iraq War's Dead and Wounded
Saul Landau
Is
Venezuela Next?
Website of the Day
The Spiral Railway
March 24, 2004
Gary Leupp
General
Musharraf's IOU
Richard Oxman
Shakespeare
for Kerry
William Lind
The Beginning
of Phase Three: 4G Warfare Hits Iraq
Rep. Ron Paul
Iraq One Year Later
Michael Dempsey
Killing Rachel Corrie Again
Alan Farago
The Bad Math of Mercury: Bush's War on the Unborn
Benjamin Dangl
and April Howard
Media
in Cuba
John L. Hess
No Lie Left Behind: Judy Miller Does Dick Clarke
Greg Weiher
Two Cheers for Dems: "We're Not as Bad as George"
Eva Golinger
An Open Letter to John Kerry on Venezuela
Grayson Childs
Where's Cynthia McKinney?
Steve Niva
Israel's Assassinations will Only
Fuel More Suicide Bombings
Website of the Day
The Bushiad and the Idiossey
March 23, 2004
Phillip Cryan
The
Drug War's Next Casualty: Colombia's National Parks
Ron Jacobs
They Shoot Men in Wheelchairs, Too?
Dave Lindorff
A Spanish Parallel: Scare Tactics and Elections
Mike Whitney
Richard Clarke and Teflon George
Brian McKinlay
Bush's Lil' Buddy in Trouble: John Howard Starts to Wobble
JG
Driving Mr. Koon: "Jim Crow Lives Next Door"
Phyllis Pollack
Gettin' Jigga with Metallica: the Battle Over the Double Black
CD
Ahmed Bouzid
Sharon's One-Way Track
Sean Carter
The G-Word Goes to Court: One Nation Under [Your Logo Here]
M. Shahid Alam
World's Greatest Country: Do the Facts Lie
March 22, 2004
Mazin Qumsiyeh
On Extrajudicial
Executions
Uri Avnery
The
Assassination of Sheikh Yassin is Worse Than a Crime
Gilad Atzmon
Sharon's Rampage
Mike Whitney
Guilty Until Proven Innocent: the Story of Captain James Yee
Jason Leopold
Firm With Ties to Cheney Faces Criminal Indictment in Cal Energy
Scam
Greg Moses
Stop
Walling and Stalling: a Report from Houston's Peace March
Phil Gasper
San Francisco: 25,000 March for an End to the Occupation
Lenni Brenner
Report
from NYC: Old and Young Parade for Peace
Julian Borger
The Clarke Revelations
Steve Perry
Karl Rove's Moment
Website of the Day
Enviros Against War
March 20 / 21, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Gay
Marriage: Sidestep on Freedom's Path
Jeffrey St. Clair
Intolerable Opinions in an Age of Shock and Awe: What Would Lilburne
Do?
Ted Honderich
Tony Blair's Moral Responsibility for Atrocities
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
The Plot Against Syria: an Irresponsibility Act
Gary Leupp
On Viewing "The Passion of the Christ"
William A. Cook
Fence, Barrier, Wall
Phil Gasper
Bush v. Bush-lite: Chomsky's Lesser Evilism
Ron Jacobs
Fox News and the Masters of War
John Stanton
Which Way John Kerry? The Senator's Inner Nixon
Justin Felux
Kerry and Black America: Just Another Stupid White Man
Mike Whitney
Greenspan's Treason: Swindling Posterity
Augustin Velloso
Avoiding Osama's Abyss
Lawrence Magnuson
Eyes Wide Open: Is Spain Caving in to Terrorism?
Kathy Kelly
Getting Together to Defeat Terrorism
Tracy McLellan
Scalia & Cheney: Happiness is a Warm Gun
Kurt Nimmo
Emma Goldman for President!
Luis J. Rodriguez
The Redemptive Power of Art: It's Not a Frill
Mickey Z
The Michael Moore Diet
Jackie Corr
When Harry Truman Stopped in Butte
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Great Trial of 1922: Gandhi's Vision of Responsibility
Poets' Basement
Stew Albert & JD Curtis
Website of the Weekend
Virtual World Election
March 19, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Zapatero
to Kerry: Back Off, Senator, Our Troops are Coming Home
Ann Harrison
So
Protesters, How Well Do You Know Your Rights?
William MacDougall
Fortress Britain's War on "Economic Migrants"
Greg Moses
Sold American: Cowboy Nation Gets Ready to Vote
Cynthia McKinney
Haiti and the Impotence of Black America: Roll Back This Coup,
Mr. Bush
Norman Solomon
Spinning the Past; Threatening the Future
John L. Hess
"Missing" Evidence and the NYTs
Vicente Navarro
The
End of Aznar, Bush's Best Friend
Website of the War
Naming the Dead
March 18, 2004
Gila Svirsky
Rachel
Corrie, One Year Later: She Never Lost Faith in Decency
Christopher Brauchli
Drilling a Hole in the Sanctions: How Halliburton Made $73 Million
from Saddam
William Kulin
Report from Iraq: Just Another Baghdad Car Bombing
Mike Whitney
Resistance: a Moral Imperative
Rep. Ron Paul
Broadcast Indecency Act: an Indecent Attack on the First Amendment
Josh Frank
The Nader Question
Jack Random
They Lied & They Lost: Madrid and the Lessons of Democracy
Greg Bates
What Makes a Nader Voter Tick? A Survey
Sam Hamod / Alfredo Reyes
Contempt of the World: Hastert, Bush and Cheney on Spain
Gary Leupp
The
Madrid Bombings: the Chickens Come Home to Roost
Website of the Day
Privatizing Armageddon: Buy Your Own Doomsday Key
March 17, 2004
Marjorie Cohn
Spain, the EU and the US: War on
Terror or Civil Liberties?
David MacMichael
Untruth
and Consequences
Michael Donnelly
Wear the Green, But Skip the Green Beer
Tom Stephens
"Steady Leadership": Let the Buyer Beware
Wayne Madsen
Sen. Kerry, Let Me Help You Out
Karyn Strickler
Who Owns the Sierra Club? Anonymous Donors and Rigged Elections
Peter Linebaugh
Bush:
Blanc Blanc
March 16, 2004
Lenni Brenner
James
Madison: the Anti-Clerical Father of the Bill of Rights
Scott Boehm
Madrid
Diary: How to Change World Order in Four Days
Alexander Lynch
From Franco to Aznar: the History
Behind the Spanish Elections
Sam Hamod and Alfredo
Reyes
The Truth About the Spanish Elections: Aznar Was Going Down Anyway
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
You Wouldn't Do a Dog This Way:
Executing David Clayton Hill
Mike Whitney
The Case for a Nuclear Iran
Robert Fisk
The Bloody Price of the "War
on Terror"
Bill Christison
The
Aftershocks from Madrid
CounterPunch Photo Wire
The Passion of St. Teresa
Website of the Day
Join the War on Art!
March 15, 2004
Harry Browne
Terror Nothing New to Europe
Mike Whitney
Justice
Not Murder: the Tragic Symmetry of Terrorism
Lidice Valenzuela
Haiti: a Coup without Consultation
Greg Moses
Lessons
from the Texas Primaries: Looking for a Coalition with Legs
Mickey Z.
Depraved Indifference: C-Sections, Patriarchy & Women's Health
Asaf Shtull-Trauring
AWOL
in New York: From Refusenik to Organizer
CounterPunch Wire
Gen. Gramajo Executed by Bees!
March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The
Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power
Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!
William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)
William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks
Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us
All Less Safe
Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars
Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists
Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor
Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge
Helen Scott and Ashley
Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?
Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy
of the American Prison
Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On
Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report
on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding
Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith
Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
March
29, 2004
Haiti's Troika of Terror
Thugs,
a Buffoon and Pirates
By THE BLACK COMMENTATOR
The United States has delivered George Bush's
ghoulish brand of democracy to Haiti. The nightmarish components
of Haiti's ruling troika gathered last Saturday, in Gonaives,
the country's fourth-largest city--a macabre assemblage that
seemed designed to assault the sensibilities of civilized humans.
The Buffoon
As if to erase January's bicentennial
celebrations from Haitian and world memory, the fat man from
Boca Raton superimposed himself on history. "From today
on we will be celebrating our 200th anniversary of independence,"
said Gerard Latortue, until only a few weeks ago a talk show
host in Florida, before that, an international business consultant,
now the U.S.-picked Prime Minister of Haiti. "I ask you
for a moment of silence for all the people who fell fighting
against the dictatorship, and especially for Amiot Metayer,"
said Latortue, referring to the slain commander of the drug-dealing
Cannibal Army. "(In the United States) they thought the
people in Gonaives were thugs and bandits," said the puppet,
pretending to be a Haitian Ronald Reagan. "But they are
freedom fighters."
The Thugs
Amiot's brother, Butteur, wore a suit
to signify his newfound respectability and to dispel the memory
of his followers' mutilations of policemen's bodies after the
seizure of Gonaives in early February. Lending further dignity
to the occasion was Jean Tatun, the mass murderer who escaped
from a life term in prison to join his fellow U.S.-financed "rebels"
at their Dominican Republic bases, last August. Guy Philippe,
the Green Beret-trained, former police chief who fled to the
Dominican Republic in 2000 to avoid drug and coup charges, met
the visiting dignitaries at the helicopter landing zone. Philippe
is a hit with the New York Times, which called him "personable"
and "media-smart," and reported that the "rebel
leader" promised to "put his forces under the prime
minister's orders."
Tatun, Mateyar and Philippe rubbed elbows
with Bernard Gousse, Latortue's new Justice Minister. Literally
surrounded by criminals, Gousse is nevertheless intent on building
a criminal case against Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Defense Minister and retired General
Herard Abraham represented the rapidly reconstituting Haitian
Army, whose sole purpose in modern times has been to repress
the Haitian people. After a meeting with Abraham last week, Guy
Philippe "boasted that Abraham had made no mention of the
need for the rebels to disarm, let alone quizzed him about the
modalities of any rebel disarmament."
The Pirates
Diplomat David Lee hobnobbed with the
criminals on behalf of the Organization of American States. Lee
attempted to justify his presence, saying, "We're trying
to encourage reconciliation"--but succeeded only in further
confirming that the OAS is an instrument of U.S. policy. The
actual meaning of reconciliation is that French troops, who are
nominally responsible for northern Haiti, follow a laissez faire
policy regarding the gunmen of Guy Philippe, Butteur Metayer,
Jean Tatun and their ilk.
The Gonaives ceremony signals that the
gangsters are the "good guys," not to be interfered
with. That puts them off-limits to the 450-man Canadian contingent.
"Any weapons that could potentially pose a threat to the
multinational force will be confiscated," said Lieutenant-Colonel
Jim Davis. "We will disarm the bad guys, but those people
entitled to have weapons for any number of reasons yet to be
defined will have an opportunity to carry them."
The American commander on the ground
has no intention of disarming Latortue's "freedom fighters."
The commander of a multinational force
in Haiti insisted on Sunday it was not his mission to disarm
militants, differing with earlier U.S. assertions that the force
would confiscate weapons.
"This is a country with a lot of
weapons and disarmament is not our mission. Our mission is to
stabilize the country," U.S. Marine Corp. Brig. Gen. Ronald
Coleman, head of the 3,000-strong U.N.-sanctioned force, told
Reuters.
General Coleman's helicopters provided
limo service for the Gonaives ghoul-fest--a macabre exercise
in nation-building that could only have been hatched by minds
utterly consumed by racism. This is what Black government looks
like to George Bush.
The gangster life
The rogues gallery summit in Gonaives
horrified even some members of the anti-Aristide Haitian elite.
"We strongly condemn this unholy alliance which the interim
government has struck with the Gonaives rebels," said the
National Coalition for Haitian Rights (NCHR), which is closely
tied to anti-Aristide politicians and their American allies (see
December 4, 2003). "We note that such unholy alliances,
in place since 1994 when President Aristide returned from exile,
have weakened rather than strengthened law enforcement and governmental
authority..." Latortue is "fanning the flames of lawlessness,"
said the New York-based group.
The NCHR told The Guardian that "five
police officers have been detained on suspicion of killing five
young men believed to be supporters of Aristide's Lavalas Family
party" in Port-au-Prince.
Relatives of the victims, ages 17-24,
said the officers rounded up and executed the men over the weekend
and then dumped their bodies throughout the capital, Aliazar
said Wednesday. The officers were detained Monday and were being
held pending an investigation. No charges have been filed.
Vast stretches of the country are either
wholly without law, or worse, under the control of the most dangerous
elements of society. Fort Liberte, in the north, "is in
the hands of escaped convicts," according to United Nations
spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs. "The town is virtually deserted.
There is no market. Many houses have been burned. Prisoners control
most parts of the city," said Byrs.
Convict-rule may be preferable to the
tender mercies of Latortue's friends. "In the seaside town
of Les Cayes, armed rebels who helped oust Haiti's first democratically
elected leader carry out public executions, unchallenged by police
or foreign troops," said news reports.
Throughout Haiti, mere suspicion of Aristide
association may mark citizens for death--"reconciliation,"
gangster style. The Associated Press reports that Senator Yvon
Feuille has "charged Lavalas members were being hounded
across the country and even being killed."
"Everywhere Lavalas is a victim.
Besides those physical massacres, we see there is a political
massacre being prepared behind Lavalas' back," he said.
"Without Lavalas, there is no solution. Without Lavalas,
there won't be the peace we need so much."
He denounced what he said was a "white
American and French colonists' plan" to marginalize the
movement that helped bring Haiti's first democratic elections
in 1990, which Aristide won in a landslide.
The repression is general in scope, yet
sometimes maddening in its pettiness, as in the case of the 12-year-old
Cap Haitian girl targeted for political retaliation because a
death squad found a photograph of her giving flowers to President
Aristide (see San Francisco Bay View, March 17). Death brings
a shallow grave in places like the field of bones near Titanyen
on the coast road north of the capital. There, a Miami Herald
reporter found scattered on the ground "two skulls, three
pelvic bones, dozens of femurs and tibias, fragments of a jaw
with good teeth. Hundreds in all"--the overflow from Port-au-Prince's
morgues. No one knows who they are, or how they died.
Haiti Information
Project
Journalists associated with the deposed
Aristide government or the mass organizations of Lavalas enjoy
none of the immunities accorded the corporate media in Haiti.
They are fair game for the death squads--who since last Saturday
are acknowledged partners in the U.S.-installed government. There
is, literally, no safe place for real journalism in Haiti, thanks
to the Bush regime.
But "Truth, crushed to earth shall
rise, again." The Haitian Information Project (HIP), begun
in the months before the coup in cooperation with the Marin Interfaith
Taskforce, in northern California, has fielded teams of young
journalists from the ranks of the oppressed. ( renders every
assistance possible to HIP.) The Project's reporters must operate
in what one of them calls "a witch-hunt environment, where
the term 'chimere' is used as a code word to justify slaughter."
The Haiti Information Project filed this
report to from somewhere in Port-au-Prince:
The local media contribute to the hysteria
of repression. For example, Radio Metropole recently broadcast
claims of a Lavalas plot to assassinate Latortue, with no evidence
and no rebuttal. People pay with their lives in the wake of rumors
like that.
The "Boca Raton government"
contributes to this climate of terror. Anyone who ever organized
any kind function for Lavalas is now the target of death threats.
There is absolutely no political space open to Lavalas. At least
2000 people are still hiding from the death squads. There are
nightly raids by the death squads into the neighborhoods of Bel
Air and Cite Soleil. These guys somehow manage to slip past the
peacekeepers.
Prisoners are held in the local police
stations throughout the capital and the countryside. None are
being transferred to the National Penitentiary. It is extremely
difficult for families to discover if their loved ones are in
custody, or have been made to disappear.
The National Police look more and more
like an army. Before the coup, maybe ten percent of the National
Police were from the disbanded military. Now, they are totally
military. This is being referred to as the militarization of
the police. Although the U.S claims that they are against the
former military taking power, they are militarizing the police
"to the teeth."
Bodies found on the streets are not an
accurate measure of the victims of the death squads. When Lavalas
militants fall, other militants take the bodies away to give
them a proper burial, so that they won't be taken away and burned,
and so the families will have a chance to grieve.
All of this terror is supported by, created
by the Bush Administration. People are very clear about that,
and refer to the foreign presence as an occupation force. People
do not consider what is going on in Gonaives to be a real disarmament.
The killers only turn in old, inferior weapons. Where are the
brand new M-16s? The question is: Do they still have arms stockpiled
in the Dominican Republic?
The Haiti Information Project correspondent
pointed to the harsh police measures against the last large Lavalas
demonstration, March 11, as proof that "this 'Boca Raton
government' is very afraid because they have no base of support.
The last thing they want is Lavalas supporters throwing up five
fingers in front of the Marines. [The gesture signifies the five
full years of Aristide's elected term in office.] The last thing
they want is for the movement of the poor to reassert itself.
If they had elections today, Aristide would win."
Retaliation by Rape
The last time Aristide was overthrown,
in 1991, an estimated 5,000 of his supporters were murdered and
an untold number of women subjected to "political rape."
Many women fear the curtain is descending again, reports DeNeen
L. Brown of the Washington Post:
In the three years until the United States
restored Aristide to office in 1994, survivors' groups and human
rights activists said, thousands of women became rape victims
as military and paramilitary groups terrorized people they considered
Aristide supporters....
As a new government is formed following
the latest political violence and instability, the women in the
group say it is unclear whether those who were raped after the
1991 coup will find justice.... In the darkened law office in
Port-au-Prince, several women sat alongside Deluce. They want
to serve as witnesses in the political rape cases, but identified
themselves by using only their initials, fearing reprisals if
they speak out.
"It was for the return of democracy
that we were raped," said M.V., 44, a tiny woman wearing
a black print dress and pearls. "We want the minister of
justice to give us justice. We don't want this to happen again
for women of Haiti."
The cell connection
One thing is clear: during this period
of repression, Haitians will not be so isolated as a decade ago.
The cell phone is their link to the outside world, and to news
organizations like Pacifica Radio KPFA-FM's Flashpoints. Program
executive producer Dennis Bernstein spoke with Andralese Lafortune,
a 49-year-old high school teacher from Gonaives who is in hiding.
"During the last coup, we didn't
have any way to reach the outside world," Lafortune recalls.
"For three years we suffered under a repressive regime,
while many were killed and tortured. But we had no voice then.
We were muzzled."
Digital technology means the killers
cannot operate in total darkness, even under the cloak of the
superpower. Haiti activists in the U.S. have been able to respond
to the crisis in "real time," eroding the corporate
media's information monopoly and thus undercutting their ability
to act as a megaphone for the Bush men.
However, fascist-minded Haitian Americans
are cyber-wise, too. Emboldened by the gangster's return to power,
U.S.-based thugsters have issued threats to Aristide supporters
on American soil. According to Marguerite Laurent, Chairperson
of Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network, pro-gangster e-mailers
are circulating detailed information on potential targets.
In light of the current bloodbath in
Haiti against the ousted President's supporters, this is extreme.
Threats are being made against pro-democracy Haitian-Americans
living in the U.S. Their names, sometimes U.S. addresses and
passports are included in the list of "marked persons"
who must be shut down!
Combined with the last "addresses"
e-mail Mr. Johndannies sent to us...it seems a very strategic
plan to gut whatever is left of the pro-democracy advocates not
now in Latortue's jails in Haiti. Nothing should be taken for
granted here.
Well said, since the "Boca Raton
government" is a wholly Bush-owned property.
Solid African American
support
The Bush-Powell-Rice deceit and assault
on Haiti was received as a slap in the face of Black America.
Seldom in modern history has a foreign policy issue so galvanized
African American opinion, from the grassroots to Capitol Hill.
Although corporate media attempts to declare the Haiti issue
settled, the American Urban Radio Networks has joined with Black
World Today On-Line Newspapers and other Black media to publicize
a 30-day "Lend a Helping Hand to Haiti" campaign.
The campaign's reach is deep and wide.
"We come seeking ways to restore stability and wholesomeness
to the people affected by the political unrest," said Rev.
Justus Reeves, Minister of Missions for the Progressive National
Baptist Convention (PNBC). "Our dedication is to serve as
a bridge of hope to those whose lives have been destroyed."
The PNBC has set up a Haiti Relief Fund
to collect monies during the campaign, in cooperation with Ron
Daniels, of the Haitian Support Project, and a host of civic
and religious groups.
Kerry: Another ugly
American
Florida Governor Jeb Bush this week gave
backhanded credit to the Congressional Black Caucus for standing
up to brother George's Haiti atrocity. In the process, the Governor
displayed naked contempt for democracy in Black hands.
We have watched the painful struggle
in Haiti over the past 10 years, as Jean-Bertrand Aristide squandered
his opportunity to build a foundation for progress. Democracy
means more than elections. It means respecting the rule of law
and supporting a vibrant, robust civil society. Aristide destroyed
these principles in Haiti and replaced them with corruption and
violence. Groups such as the Congressional Black Caucus, who
claim to support democracy yet focus on Aristide's election,
exacerbate his betrayal of the Haitian people.
George Bush didn't invent U.S. aggression
against Haiti; that's been U.S. policy toward the Black republic
since 1804. As we wrote in our March 11 Cover Story, "American
foreign policy structures are designed to undermine popular movements
and governments at every point of contact... These U.S. foreign
policy 'structures of subversion' are institutionally connected
to the Democratic Party and organized labor, and must be dismantled,
root and branch."
The National Endowment for Democracy
(NED) is a principal American tool of subversion, the "Trojan
Horse" that guided and financed the coup-makers in Haiti
and the 2002 attempted overthrow of Hugo Chavez's popularly elected
government in Venezuela. Unless the Democratic Party and organized
labor sever their ties to the NED--and thereby delegitimize it--U.S.
subversion will continue under the guise of "spreading democratic
values."
John Kerry this week signaled that he's
a coup-maker, too. His bald bid for the Cuban Florida vote--while
simultaneously chastising Bush for the Haiti coup and the attempted
coup against Chavez!--puts Kerry in a doublespeak class of his
own. We submit the full text of Kerry's statement as a sordid
example of unprincipled--and incompetently executed--deception:
With the future of the democratic process
at a critical juncture in Venezuela, we should work to bring
all possible international pressure to bear on President Chavez
to allow the referendum to proceed. The Administration should
demonstrate its true commitment to democracy in Latin America
by showing determined leadership now, while a peaceful resolution
can still be achieved.
Throughout his time in office, President
Chavez has repeatedly undermined democratic institutions by using
extra-legal means, including politically motivated incarcerations,
to consolidate power. In fact, his close relationship with Fidel
Castro has raised serious questions about his commitment to leading
a truly democratic government.
Moreover, President Chavez's policies
have been detrimental to our interests and those of his neighbors.
He has compromised efforts to eradicate drug cultivation by allowing
Venezuela to become a haven for narco-terrorists, and sowed instability
in the region by supporting anti-government insurgents in Colombia.
The referendum has given the people of
Venezuela the opportunity to express their views on his presidency
through constitutionally legitimate means. The international
community cannot allow President Chavez to subvert this process,
as he has attempted to do thus far. He must be pressured to comply
with the agreements he made with the OAS and the Carter Center
to allow the referendum to proceed, respect the exercise of free
expression, and release political prisoners.
Here's the switch-up, the point at which
Kerry tries to scramble back to the sane side of the table.
Too often in the past, this Administration
has sent mixed signals by supporting undemocratic processes in
our own hemisphere--including in Venezuela, where they acquiesced
to a failed coup attempt against President Chavez. Having just
allowed the democratically elected leader to be cast aside in
Haiti, they should make a strong statement now by leading the
effort to preserve the fragile democracy in Venezuela.
Thus, Kerry methodically lays out the
rationale for a U.S. overthrow of Chavez, then blames Bush for
actually trying to do it. This man is dangerous. If elected,
he will fight tooth and nail to preserve the NED and the entire
apparatus of U.S. subversion around the globe. He is no friend
to the people of Haiti, Venezuela, or anywhere else in the developing
world.
Aristide's travels
Hugo Chavez has offered President Aristide
an unqualified welcome, once his sojourn in Jamaica is over.
As went to press, the Caribbean Community (Caricom) was under
unimaginable pressures from the United States to give the "Boca
Raton government" of Gerard Latortue an audience at Caricom's
Intercessional Meeting in St. Kitts--despite the puppet's previous,
pretentious threat to sever Caricom ties over Aristide's visit
to Jamaica.
The Bush men pressured Nigeria to offer
asylum to Aristide, not only because it is an ocean away but
also, no doubt, because Nigeria is home to Liberia's Charles
Taylor and other fallen "despots"--great propaganda
value for Administration spin-makers.
In an interview with Democracy Now! on
Tuesday, TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson, a close confidant
of Aristide and resident of St. Kitts, ventured that Bush's campaign
to drive Aristide out of the Western Hemisphere "will collapse
of its own weight, and it should, upon the idiots in the State
Department and the White House who tried to implement such a
fool hearty, callous plan." Robinson praised Jamaican Prime
Minister and current Caricom leader P.J. Patterson for distinguishing
"himself in making a place for President Aristide in Jamaica,
and he has met for that with threats by this administration directly
from the White House."
For all their bombast, said Robinson,
it is fear that motivates Gerard Latortue--the "new president
from Boca Raton...something of a buffoon"--and the thugs
in Washington and Haiti who support him:
They fear that Mr. Aristide has enormous
public support in Haiti. Were they not so afraid of that, they
would have no great interest, no sense of urgency about making
sure that he was well outside the Caribbean. This we have done
to a democratically elected leader, and it certainly shows that
no democracy can be given birth in Haiti until we all reckon
with what happened there, that we have removed a democratically
elected leader who still enjoys enormous support and were a new
election held today, Mr. Aristide would be overwhelmingly elected
again....
The only person we've tried to banish
from the region is the democratically elected president of the
country who was toppled by people bearing American arms and doing
America's bidding. And that's what you saw in Gonaives, the public
meeting of the three forces here, the United States, the thugs,
and the new unelected, American-installed president of Haiti.
The issue is democracy. You cannot sustain
or look towards a democratic future erected from the ashes of
a democracy that an external power has destroyed. You simply
can't forget the context story and move on. [Aristide] has a
year and a half left in his term. The election that brought him
to this term, he won by 94% and by all accounts, fairly. Both
occasions. And as evidence of how popular he is, the United States
has gone to such great and foolish lengths to banish him from
the region. You simply cannot start again without reckoning with
that, the Lavalas people still overwhelmingly support President
Aristide and they comprise the overwhelming majority of the Haitian
people. We have to come to terms with that. That is democracy
and the Bush Administration apparently doesn't like it in Haiti
any more than they liked it in Florida.
encourages donations to the Haiti Information
Project, whose reporters risk their lives daily to tell the truth
about life in Haiti under the rule of criminals and foreigners.
To fund this project make checks payable
to: MITF/Haiti Info.
Mail to:
Marin Interfaith Taskforce
P.O. Box 2481
Mill Valley, CA 94942
Voice (415) 924-3227 Fax (415) 924-3227
The
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can be reached at: publisher@blackcommentator.com
Weekend
Edition Features for March 20 / 21, 2004
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Empire of the Locusts
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William A. Cook
The Yassin Assassination: a Monstrous Insanity Blessed by the
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Some Thoughts on Waziristan: Once and Always a Colonial Army
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Bush Tells the World: "Drop Dead"
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A Memo to Karl Rove from the Hollywood Caucus
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Who Are the Real Terrorists?
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Howling in the Belly of the Confederacy
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Reasonable Doubt: Why Barry Bonds is Not on Steroids
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Marxists
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Spoilers, Electability and the Poverty of American Democracy
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Hamod, Guthrie, Davies and Albert
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