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Now Available! How the Press Led the USA Into War on Iraq Buy End Times Now! Today's Stories September 6, 2007 Kathleen and Bill Christison Bush, Iran and Israel's Hidden Hand   September 5, 2007 Stan Goff The End Begins Michael Dickinson Working for Mother Teresa: Memoirs of a Rebellious Volunteer Matthew Abraham Standing Firm with Norman Finkelstein and DePaul's Heroic Students: a Defining Moment Patrick Cockburn The Basra Debacle Dave Lindorff Beware the Wounded Beast Paul Craig Roberts Who Are the Fanatics? Clifton Ross Ecuador and the Struggle for Latin American Unity Elizabeth Schulte Katrina's Forgotten Refugees Joseph Grosso Labor Day in New York City Ben Terrall Where's Nancy? On Trying to Protest Pelosi in San Francisco Website of the Day A Guide to Narco Dollars   September 4, 2007 Jean Bricmont Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking Iran Patrick Cockburn Cut and Run in Iraq Ron Jacobs The Haditha Massacre: Spinning a War Crime Tom Kerr Buried Alive on San Quentin's Death Row Gary Leupp The Case of Jose Maria Sison Sonja Karkar The Weeping Olive Trees of Palestine Heather Gray The Best and Worst of America: 9/11, Joseph Lowery and the Lethal Silence of Billy Graham Fidel Castro The Super-Revolutionaries Jackie Corr Home Depot Comes to Butte--Begging Bowl in Hand Sunsara Taylor Katrina and the Progress of the System Website of the Day Colombia Journal   September 3, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Brits Flee from Basra Eamon McCann Qana, Derry: The Dead Lie in Familiar Shapes Joshua Frank The End of the Green Party? Chris Floyd Post-Mortem America: Bush's Year of Triumph Marjorie Cohn A Look at Bush's Iran War Plans Walter Brasch The News Drones: How Fake Photos Helped Lead the US to War in Iraq Matt Reichel Redefining the American Dream Website of the Day Don't Get Fooled Again   September 1 / 2, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Entrapment Snares Larry Craig Andy Worthington Britain's Guantánamo Saul Landau The Tragic Ordeal of the Cuban Five David Keen An Occident Waiting to Happen: Intellectuals and the War on Terror Patrick Cockburn The Collapse of Iraq's Health Care Services Diana Johnstone Back in Uncle Sam's Pocket George Longstreth, MD & Karen Longstreth, RN The Sorrows of Occupation: Life in the West Bank Linda M. Woolf A Sad Day for Psychologists--a Sadder Day for Human Rights Ralph Nader Wrapping the World with Advertising Fred Gardner The Trial of Mollie Fry, MD Ben Tripp Enquiry in America Today David Michael Green American Indigestion: Why Bush Governs from the Gut Missy Comley Beattie Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: What the GOP Hasn't Learned About Tolerance Michael Dickinson Who's Cheating: Remembering Princess Diana Paul Krassner Assholes of the Week: From Larry Craig to Wesley Clark Ron Jacobs A Sports Nation of Millions Poets' Basement Buknatski, Davies and Mickey Z   August 31, 2007 Jeff Gibbs Why I Am Not Going to the Protest Paul Craig Roberts The War Criminal in the Living Room Ray McGovern Do We Have the Courage to Stop War with Iran? Robert Weissman The Benchmarks Iraq is Missing Matt Vidal Subprime Lending and Shady Mortgages Robin Mittenthal The Biofuels Trap Chris Kutalik Auto Makers Push Health Care Trust Solution for Industry in Crisis Richard Forno Watching Freedom's Watch Binoy Kampmark Dianified Dave Zirin Kenneth Foster Lives Website of the Day Free the Jena 6   August 30, 2007 Gary Leupp Larry Craig on the Seat John Ross Dead Forest Defenders Anthony DiMaggio Arabic as a Terrorist Language: the Right-Wing Assault on the Gibran Academy Jordan Flaherty Racism and Criminal Justice in New Orleans Michael Donnelly The Sierra Club Greenwashes Al Gore (and Desecrates John Muir) Russell Mokhiber Whiskey is for Drinking, Water is for Fighting Dennis Brutus and Patrick Bond Global Financial Apartheid William S. Lind The Truth Tellers Martha Rosenberg They Call Him Dr. Cruel Jeff Leys / Brian Terrell Seasons of Discontent: a Presidential Occupation Project Website of the Day Bragg: "Old Clash Fan Fight Song" August 29, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Maliki and The Mass Shia Pilgrimage to Kerbala Winslow T. Wheeler The Costs of the Afghanistan War David Rosen The GOP's Outed All-Stars: The Forced Freeing of Gay Men from the Republican Closet Dave Zirin Confronting Katrina Paul Craig Roberts More Shame, More Sorrow Diane Farsetta Christie Todd Whitman's Nuclear Spinning Wheel Ben Davis Who Won't Stand Up for Kenneth Foster?: Charles Rangel, For One Alan Farago The Housing Crisis and the Environment Jenna Orkin Echoes of 9/11: Another Fire at Ground Zero Don Monkerud The Vanishing American Vacation Richard Nasser Surfing Gaza: More Uplifting News from NPR Website of the Day Don't Sleep on the Struggle   August 28, 2007 Uri Avnery The Language of Force Bill Quigley Katrina, Two Years Later Joshua Frank The Fight to Save the Rocky Mountains China Hand "I am Alden Pyle:" Bush's Vietnam Fantasy Firmin DeBrabander Drug Wars: From Afghanistan to Baltimore Charles Peña Nuclear Fear Factor Andy Worthington Good Riddance, Gonzales Ramzy Baroud Abbas and the Abyss Anthony Papa Roger Stone's New Patsy Ashley Smith Drawing the Line at Kennebunkport Website of the Day B is for Bomb August 27, 2007 Jorge Mariscal The General Reports Bill Christison Why the US and Israel Should Lose Middle East Wars Manuel Garcia, Jr. 911 Emergency! Calling Robert Fisk!: You are Now Entering a Black Hole Anthony DiMaggio Chronicle of a Coup Foretold?: Bush, al-Maliki and the Press Bruce A. Roth India and the New Nuclear Era John Walsh Abe Foxman's Genocide Denial Roadshow, Part 2 Dave Lindorff Gonzo's Gone Ron Jacobs Taking It to the Streets Binoy Kampmark Poshed Up: Why the Beckhams Should Go Back to Brighty Russell D. Hoffman My Favorite Scientist: John Gofman, Bane of the Nuclear Industry Website of the Day George W. Told the Nation   August 25 / 26, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Don't Carpool with Nouri al-Maliki James Petras The Great Financial Crisis Jeffrey Buchanan / Chris Kromm Where Did the Katrina Money Go? Marjorie Cohn Turning Iraq into Vietnam Rev. William E. Alberts Jesus, the Theological Prisoner of Christianity Robert Fantina Ari Fleischer, Freedom Watch and the Pro-War Lobbyists Brian Concannon Whitewashing the History of Abolition Ralph Nader What Do They Have to Hide? Laura Carlsen Extending NAFTA's Reach Fred Gardner Notes from Hempfest David Michael Green History, the Last Refuge of Scoundrels Stephen Soldz Why Mary Pipher Returned Her APA Award Mike Ferner Combatants for Peace: Former Enemies Find New Way Forward Paul Krassner Mort Sahl's Punchline Ben Tripp Resistance is Impossible--But Not Futile Missy Beattie President Druzilla Website of the Weekend Blue Print for Gulf Renewal   August 24, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts A Hegemonic Hubris Greg Moses A Cruel and Unusual Excuse William Schroder Bush, Vietnam and Iraq Alan Farago The Pain of Paper Millionaires Jackie Corr Uncle Ben Bernacke and the Nanny State Jeff Ballinger Naomi Klein and the Path Not Taken Bill Quigley Pere Jean-Juste Comes Home Dave Zirin Inching Toward Insanity Richard Rhames Deaver and the Making of Reagan Ryan Haygood How Newark Can Mend Website of the Day Lindorff's Iraq Rag   August 23, 2007 Kathy Kelly We Shouldn't be Causing This P. Sainath Meeting the Mahatma Ron Jacobs Bush, Vietnam and 14 More GIs Dead Christopher Brauchli Beyond Kafka: Mistakes, Soreheads and Eavesdropping D.K. Wilson When Sports Journalists Talk Race Joshua Frank The Weeds of Willapa Bay Dan Bacher Schwarzenegger's True Lies About Dams and Canals Brenda Norrell Bush's House of Snakes: Indians, Border Biometrics and Migrating Corporations John Wright The Ongoing Tragedy of Afghanistan David Vest Elvis and Racism, Round 2 Website of the Day Urgent Plea: the Black Agenda Report Needs Your Help!   August 22, 2007 Norman Finkelstein Remembering Raul Hilberg Marc Levy Sleepless in Iraq Lawrence R. Velvel When Courts Bow Down to Secrecy Ray McGovern Bush's Iran War Drums Beating Louder Norman Solomon How to Survive at the Pentagon on $2 Billion a Day John Walsh Abe Foxman's Genocide Denial Road Show Michael Dickinson Little Brother is Watching You William S. Lind Operation Kabuki?: the Credibility of David Petraeus Bill Hatch A Short Walk into the Valley of Death Kenneth E. Foster and John Joe Amador How We Will Protest Our Executions David Vest Predictable Parallels: CNN and PBS Website of the Day The Once and Future Steve Perry August 21, 2007 Saul Landau The FBI's New Power Alan Farago Sand Houses and Missing Beaches John Stauber Iraq: the Gift that Keeps on Bleeding Phillip Rizk Gaza and the Jordanian Option Debbie Nathan Giuliani's Garden District Binoy Kampmark The Art of Sinning Martha Rosenberg The Fastow Economy Sunsara Taylor Back to School During Wartime Website of the Day Coffee with the Troops   August 20, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Padilla Jury Opens Pandora's Box Uri Avnery Stumbling Toward Another War Rannie Amiri Nasrallah's Surprise: a Warning from Beirut's No Bluff Zone John Ross The Fine Art of Bad Elections Harvey Wasserman The Senate's Radioactive Rip-Off Robert Billyard Canada's Disgrace: the Cases of Maher Arar and Omar Khadr Dave Lindorff Excuse Us, Nancy Pelosi James Rothenberg Why Your Vote Will Never Matter David "DC" Larson To Smear a King Website of the Day Bird Cinema August 18 / 19, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Exit Karl Rove, Everyone's Useful Demon Saul Landau The FBI in War and Peace Ralph Nader Greed and Folly on Wall Street Patrick Cockburn A Bloody Week in Iraq Robert Fantina Cannon Fodder: Beau Biden and other "Deployable Assets" Robert S. Eshelman Azar's Story: an Iraqi Refugee Living in Syria P. Sainath The Last Battle of Laxmi Panda Dave Lindorff Tossing Fuel on a Fire: US Military Aid to Israel Anthony DiMaggio Iraq, Iran & the Vanishing Context in American News Fred Gardner The Politics of Schizophrenia Ron Jacobs The Virtues of Resistance Tom Turnipseed War Profiteering and Corruption: From Lexington, S.C. to the White House Paul Krassner Assholes of the Week: Special Preachers, Priests and Clerics Edition! Ben Tripp I'm So Screwed Andrew Wimmer Living With Grief Nancy Oden Where Inmates Can Grow for Free N.D. Jayaprakash India Backtracks on Disarmament Rick Smith Reflections on Cuba: an Interview with Doug Morris Missy Beattie The Suicide Bomber Poets' Basement Engel, Ford, Orloski and McLellan Website of the Weekend Imperial Storm Troopers in Action August 17, 2007 Joanne Mariner Terrorizing Social Protest Paul Craig Roberts China is not the Problem Shepherd Bliss Returning to the Scene of the Crime: Chile, 30 Years Later Dave Lindorff Convicting Padilla: Bad News for All Americans John Muthyala The Water and the Road: Katrina, Poverty and the American Dream Patrick Cockburn Deepening Divsions in Iraq Sherwood Ross Military Interrogators are Posing as Lawyers at Gitmo Phil Doe The Old West Moves East: the Political Science of Colorado River Water David Michael Green Karl Rove and the Damage Done Website of the Day Gorilla Slaughter: a Personal Account August 16, 2007 Jonathan Cook The Second Lebanon War, a Year Later Christopher Brauchli Babes in Toxic Toyland Norman Solomon Backspin for War Lee Sustar / Orlando Sepuldeva Victory on the Picket Line: How Immigrant Workers Won Their Strike Against Cygnus George Bisharat Boycott Movement Targets Israel Binoy Kampmark Tasteless: Gordon Ramsey and the Death of Gastronomy Evelyn Pringle Protection Racket?: the FDA and Avandia Hugo Blanco The Epic Struggle of Indigenous Andean / Amazonian Website of the Day Burning Man: the Field Recordings         Subscribe Online

September 6, 2007 Where a Minimum Wage of $2 a Day is Too Much for the Lords of Industry Haiti and the Responsibility to Protect By YVES ENGLER Why did Canada help overthrow Haiti's elected government in 2004? That's a question I heard over and over when speaking about Canada in Haiti: Waging War on the Poor Majority, a book Anthony Fenton and I co-wrote. Most people had difficulty understanding why their country - and the US to some extent - would intervene in a country so poor, so seemingly marginal to world affairs. Why would they bother? I would answer that Canada participated in the coup as a way to make good with Washington, especially after (officially) declining the Bush administration's invitation (order) to join the "coalition of the willing" in Iraq. It is also worth noting that at the start of 2003 the Haitian minimum wage was 36 Gourdes ($1) a day, which was nearly doubled to 70 Gourdes by the Aristide government. Of course, this was opposed by domestic and international capital, but especially Canadian capital. The largest blank T-shirt maker in the world, Montreal-based Gildan Activewear employs up to 5,000 people in Port-au-Prince's assembly sector. Most of Gildan's work is subcontracted to Andy Apaid, who was the leader of the Group 184 domestic "civil society" that opposed Aristide's government. It is also clear that some Canadian mining companies saw better opportunities in a post-Aristide government (A recent Toronto Star article explained, "Another Canadian-backed company recently resumed prospecting in Haiti after abandoning its claims a decade ago. Steve Lachapelle - a Quebec lawyer who is now chair of the board of the company, called St. Genevieve Haiti - says employees were threatened at gunpoint by partisans of ex-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide."). Another reason for the intervention came out of the contempt, heightened during the country's 200-year anniversary of independence, directed at Haiti ever since the country's revolution dealt a crushing blow to slavery and white supremacy. The threat of a good example - particularly worrisome for the powers that be, since Haiti is so poor - contributed to the motivation for the coup. Aristide was perceived as a barrier to a thorough implementation of the neo-liberal agenda. The attitude seems to have been, "If we can't force our way in Haiti, where can we?" But, I was never entirely satisfied with my answers. That was one motivation for spending hundreds of hours over the past year in the McGill University library researching the history of Canadian foreign policy. So, why did Canada help overthrow the elected Haitian government? Here's what I've learned so far: Historically, countries' foreign affairs were mostly about "projecting force" in a hostile world. This meant the use of power (military or economic) for protection or to gain advantage. In the modern era, the "advantage" to be gained and then protected was capitalist entitlement, the ability to make a profit. In other words, foreign affairs have mostly been about asserting and protecting the "rights" of a country's wealth owners. The Canadian government, from its beginning, was part of the command and control apparatus of the world economic system. At first, Canada served as an arm of the British Empire, but, given the country's location, quickly became intertwined with the USA. Canada's role over the past five decades, as assigned by the dominant power, has typically been some sort of "policing" operation, usually called peacekeeping. Since Canada has primarily been a "policing" rather than "military" power one must look to the language of policing to discover the motivations for our Haitian policy. Over the past decade there has been much discussion of something called "pulling our weight" in external affairs. In laymen's terms this means spending more of the country's resources on defending and expanding the ability to make a profit around the world, for Canadian capitalists in particular, but also for the system in general. While the less sophisticated neoconservatives have simply called for more military spending and a pro-US foreign policy, the more liberal Canadian supporters of capitalism have been busy creating an ideological mask, called the "responsibility to protect" that will accomplish the same end. The "responsibility to protect" is essentially a justification for imperialism using the dialect of policing instead of the old language of empire and militarism. It says there are "failed states" that must be overthrown because they do not provide adequately for their own citizens and because they threaten world order. This is the international equivalent of the "zero tolerance" (also called the "broken window") strategy of the New York City police department. The policy is to aggressively go after petty crimes in order to create an environment that discourages more serious law breaking. In the same fashion, the international community should go after "failed states" that do not directly threaten other countries by invasion but only create an environment where "crime" may thrive. (Noam Chomsky has used the Mafia analogy to explain the less sophisticated, older imperialist version of this policy. Any and all challenges, even minor ones, must be met with violence until "order" is established. The "responsibility to protect" differs in form but not in substance.) The coup in Haiti was a Canadian-managed experiment in the use of the "responsibility to protect" doctrine. Aristide was overthrown precisely because Haiti is so unimportant to the world economic system and because cracking down on it is the international economic equivalent of the New York City police cracking down on graffiti writers. Once again Haiti was an example to the rest of the world, a message from the world's rich and powerful. The question to answer now is what next? And one can only hope that history will not be our guide. The first Haitian revolution was the earliest and most successful challenge to the entitlement of capitalist wealth owners in the era of slavery. In the late 1700s Haiti was home to some of the most brutal large-scale labour exploitation the world has ever seen. Stolen and shipped from Africa, nearly half a million slaves worked under horrific conditions as the "property" of approximately ten thousand white landowners and a few thousand property owners of mixed race. Up to 40 percent of France's GDP came from Haiti in the mid 1700s. The profitability of Haiti's sugar plantations was that era's equivalent of Middle East oil. The slave revolution from which Haiti was born was a rejection of the capitalist system as it then existed. But the country never found its way to an alternative economic system. Instead, within three years of independence the lighter-skinned plantation owners overthrew and murdered the country's liberation hero Jean-Jacques Dessalines (the French having killed the famous revolutionary, Tousaint Louverture, prior to independence). Excluded from international commerce by the world's capitalists, and facing threats of invasion, Haiti promised to repay its former exploiters. In 1825 Haiti agreed to pay $21 billion (in 2004 dollars) to compensate French slaveholders for their loss of property (land and now free Haitians). The price for its reintegration into the world economic system was extremely high. Foreign powers, especially Germany, France and the US, repeatedly sent gunboats into Haitian waters. The most common reason was to press Haiti to pay debts (often to businesses from these countries) it was unable to afford. In one instance, US marines secretly entered Port-au-Prince and took the national treasury. The 1915 US invasion/occupation of Haiti was partly about forcing the country to repay its debt. And during that occupation, the US took over Haiti's independence debt to France, which was not finally repaid until 1947. The Haitian state became dependent on foreign governments, autocratic and extremely repressive, because its primary role was ensuring the repayment of debt. Once again the Haitian people and government are being forced along an economic path dictated by the world's economic elite and I fear the result will be the same as before. Of the $1.2 billion in "aid" for Haiti announced at a Washington donors' conference in July 2004, more than half was loans, which Haitians must repay. Haitians will have to repay this money even though they did not choose the Gerard Latortue regime that got most of the money, the US, France and Canada did. Much like compensating French slaveholders Haitians will (literally) be paying for the coup in the years to come. Already, under the thumb of Haiti's debt holders and a foreign occupation, the elected government of Rene Preval is privatizing the last of Haiti's state-owned companies. Supporters of capitalism sometimes argue, incredibly, that Haiti's impoverishment is a result of the country's lack of capitalism. But, as even a short visit to Haiti quickly demonstrates, the country has no shortage of entrepreneurs or a willingness to work. Rather, a study of history reveals that the economic system commonly called capitalism has only ever been interested in profiting from the super exploitation of the vast majority of Haitians and ignoring their humanity. Yves Engler is the author of two books: Canada in Haiti: Waging War on the Poor Majority (with Anthony Fenton) and Playing Left Wing: From Rink Rat to Student Radical. He can be reached at: yvesengler@hotmail.com Your Ad Here

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