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Today's
Stories
March 10, 2004
Gary Leupp
On Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the
Uses of al-Qaeda "Links"
March 9, 2004
Greg Weiher
The
Zarqawi Gambit, Part 2
Ben Tripp
Word Up! Let's Have a Conversation
Tom Barry
Neo-Cons Target Syria
Sharon Smith
The Hypocrites in the Catholic Church
Robert Fisk
The Same Old Iraq
Doug Giebel
The Bush Strategy: Laughing All the Way
Ralph Nader
Pension Rights, the Trail of Broken Promises
Daniel Estulin
In Memory of Ricardo Ortega: a Great Journalist, Killed in Haiti
Dave Lindorff
Martha Stewart's Cloudy Day
Saul Landau
Will the Filthy Rich Dump Bush?
Website of the Day
Imperial Armies in the Garden
March 8, 2004
Amy Goodman
An
Interview with Aristide
Eric Ruder
An Interview
with Robert Fatton on the Coup in Haiti
Robert Jensen
The Presidential Library Terrorist
Connection
Mike Whitney
Expel the US from the Security Council
Jason Leopold
How Cheney Helped Cover Up Pakistan's
Nuclear Proliferation
Mazin Qumsiyeh
Why is Apartheid Touted as a Solution?
Kevin Alexander Gray
The Legacy of Strom Thurmond
Derek Seidman
Radical Continuity: an Interview with Paul Buhle
Steve Perry
Kerry Fiddles While He Could be Burning Bush
Website of the Day
Patriot
Act Game
March 6 / 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Understanding the World with
Paul Sweezy
Robert Pollin
Remembering Paul Sweezy
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Timber Theft
Tom Reeves
Bush's Mass Deportations: 63,000 and Counting
Charles Lewis
Who Mugged Howard Dean in Iowa:
Kerry, Torricelli and a Mysterious Frontgroup
Tom Jackson
My Breakfast with Sen. Judd Gregg
Kurt Nimmo
Is Venezuela Next?
Alan Cisco
A Report from Caracas
Jack Random
Haitian Democracy be Damned
Colin Piquette
Oh, Canada: the Coup Coalition
Lee Sustar
Labor's State of Emergency
William D. Hartung
Iraq and the Costs of War
David Sally
Rebuilding
Amérique
Mark Scaramella
When God Mooned Moses: Test Your Bible Knowledge
Mickey Z.
What We Can Learn from Ashcroft's Gallbladder
Ron Jacobs
Politics and Baseball
Dave Zirin
The Longest Jump: the Blackballing of Phil Shinnick
Poets' Basement
John Holt and Larry Kearney
Website of the Weekend
National Day of Action for Rachel Corrie
March 5, 2004
Chris Floyd
Uncle
Sugar: How the WMD Scam Put Money in Bush Family Pockets
Ron Jacobs
Chaos
Reigns: Haiti and Iraq
Lisa Viscidi
Guatemalan
Refugees: a Difficult Return
Yves Engler
Canada and the Coup in Haiti
Mike Legro
Those Bush Ads: Some Dead Bodies Are Worth More Than Others
Javier Armas
A Night of Inspiration: Oakland Benefit for Grocery Workers Strike
Bennett Hoffman
"Who Cares About Haiti, Anyway?"
Bill Christison
Faltering Neo-Cons Still Dangerous
Website of the Day
Haiti Support Group
March 4, 2004
Diane Christian
Sex
and Ideals
Sen. Robert Byrd
Stop the Stonewalling, Mr. President: Fairy Tales, Bush and the
9/11 Commission
Norman Solomon
Assuming the Right to Intervene: The US Press and Haiti
Jack Brown
A Fragrant Saga of Mexico's Greens
Hal Cranmer
The
John Kerry Experience
David Lindorff
Greenspan's Pension
Sam Smith
The Election is Over, We Lost
Christopher Brauchli
Goin'
to the Chapel: The Gay and the Dead
Brian D. Barry
The "Perfect" World of E-Voting: A Computer Scientist
Reports from the Polling Booth
Richard Oxman
Arsonists for Haiti?
Peter Phillips
Haitian
Fantasies: Mainstream Media Fails Itself, Again
Tariq Ali
Notes on Anti-Semitism, Zionism and
Palestine
Website of the Day
What If Boeing Ads Told the Truth?
March 3, 2004
Heather Williams / Karl
Laraque
Marines
Retake Haiti
Jack McCarthy
Guy's
Our Guy: "I am the Chief. My Hero is Pinochet."
Robert Sandels
The
Purloined Label: The Struggle Over the Havana Club Trademark
Juliana Fredman / James Davis
Israeli Organized Crime
JG
The Yuppie Silence on Haiti
Emilio Sardi
The
Colombia/US Free Trade Deal: It's About More Than Trade
Alan Farago
Swimming in Sewage
Mike Whitney
"Blood
Will Have Blood": 143 Murdered in Liberated Iraq
CounterPunch Wire
Nader's Legislative Record in the 1960s
Steve Perry
Kerry
Advisory: Remember Lena Guerrero
Nelson George/ Marcus Miller
Miles Davis & Hip Hop: a Conversation
Website of the Day
$10,000 Is Yours for the Taking: The USS Liberty Challenge
March 2, 2004
William Blum
If Kerry's
the Answer, What's the Question?
Conn Hallinan
Haiti:
the Dangerous Muddle
JoAnn Wypijewski
The Bravo
H-Bomb Test: One WMD They Couldn't Hide
Mike Whitney
Regime Change in Haiti: the Bush Dominos Keep Falling
Ra Ravishankar
Afghanistan, the Liberation That Isn't: an Interview with Mariam
from RAWA
Dan Bacher
Merle Haggard & the Politics of Salmon: "Clearcutting
is Rape"
Greg Moses
Oscar White
Brandy Baker
Mel Gibson's Minstrelsy Show
Little Tucker Carlson
What I Did on My Vacation
Robert Fisk
All This
Talk of Civil War, Now This
Merle Haggard
Kern River
Website of the Day
Rebel Edit
March 1, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Morris
Thanks War Criminal in Front of Billions
Richard Oxman
Oscar's
Obit: Thanking Bob McNamara
Elaine Cassel
Writing and Reading as "Terrorism"
Mickey Z
Thomas Friedman's Education
Mike Whitney
George Will and Anti-Semitism: a Cul-de-Sac of Prejudice
Heather Williams
Haiti
as Target Practice: How the US Press Missed the Story
Cathy Crosson
Chanson d'amour haïtienne
Website of the Day
God Hates Shrimp
February 28 / 29, 2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Team
Gary Leupp
Another Senseless Bush Battle: Defining and Protecting Marriage
William A. Cook
Israel:
America's Albatross
Ron Jacobs
Kucinich: Good Fight; Wrong Battlefield
Ben Tripp
A Nosegay of Posies: Queer Weddings at Last!
Leilla Matsui
Dances with Crucifixes
Mike Whitney
Dismantle
the Military Goliath
Yoel Marcus
Down and Out in the Hague
Uri Avnery
The Dancing Bear
Linda S. Heard
Britons and Americans Condemned to a Hobson's Choice
Al Krebs
Unmasking a Secret American Empire: Land, Water & Cotton
Stan Cox
Life (Pat. Pend.): Genetic Commandeering
JG
The Haiti Boomerang: "After The Looting & Pillaging,
Your Hunger Will Remain"
Rick Giombetti
Censorship at the Seattle P-I on Forced Psychiatry
Keith Hoeller
The Bankruptcy of Mental Health Insurance Parity
Dave Zirin
Colorado Football: Buffalo Swill
NADERAMA
Alan Maass
Nader and the Politics of Lesser
Evils
Michael Donnelly
Regime
Rotation: Anybody But Bush...Again?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exeunt Serenaders; Enter Nader
Doug Giebel
So Nader's Running? Get Over It
Bruce Jackson
An Open Letter to Naderites
CounterPunch Wire
Stalinists for Kerry! and Other Roars from the Crowd
Poets' Basement
Davies, Scarr, Kearney & Albert
February 27, 2004
Thomas C. Mountain
A
White Jesus During Black History Month?
Laura Carlsen
Americans
Abroad: Bush is Persona Non Grata
John B. Anderson
Nader's Campaign Brings Back Memories: Creating an Open Electoral
Process
Jason Leopold
Spying
on Kofi Annan
John Chuckman
Nader,
Risk and Hope
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Putin's Russia
Ray McGovern
Punished
for Honest Intelligence
Saul Landau
The
Haiti Redux
Website of the Day
Bush: Why I'm Running for Re-election
February 26, 2004
Brandy Baker
Is Nader
on to Something?
Jacques Kinau
AEI
to Colombia: "Can't Give You Anything But Guns, Baby"
Norman Solomon
Bugging Kofi Annan: UN Spying
and the Evasions of US Journalism
Greg Weiher
A Purloined Letter: the Zarqawi Gambit
Walt Brasch
Janet Jackson, Bush & No. 542: There are No Halftime Shows
in War
Shadi Hamid
The Music World Explodes in Anger
Norman Madarasz
As Canadian as Corruption
Chris Floyd
Bullets and Ballots
Virginia Tilly
The
Deeper Meaning of the Wall
Amy Goodman / Jeremy
Scahill
Haiti's
Lawyer Says US is Arming Haiti's Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries
Website of the Day
Clear Channel Sucks
February 25, 2004
Dr. Susan Block
Saddam's
Sex Therapist and the Rape of Free Speech
Bruce Anderson
Treacherous Bastards: The Greens and the Dems and Nader
Ron Jacobs
Our Power is on the Streets and
in Our Hearts
Mike Whitney
Bush
and Gay America: the Politics of Duplicity
Sam Husseini
Jesus in 100 Words
John L. Hess
Kick Off or Flub?
Sam Hamod
Bush's Newest Red Herring
Cockburn / St. Clair
Winning
with Nader
Website of the Day
VotePact
February 24, 2004
Ralph Nader
Why
I'm Running for President
Greg Moses
Rally
the Mob! Bush, Gay Marriage and the Constitution
Douglas O'Hara
The
Merchants of Fear: Smearing Nader
Phillip Cryan
Frozen in Time: The WSJ's Paranoid
Lens on Latin America
David Lindorff
John Kerry's China Connection
Jason Leopold
Cheney's Shame: Halliburton Faces New Charges
Gary Younge
Haiti: Throttled by History
Kromm, Masri & Purohit
Why No Democracy in Iraq?
Steve Perry
Tangled Up in Red and Blue: Beware the Electoral College
February 23, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israel's Apartheid Wall on Trial
at The Hague
Kurt Nimmo
Richard Perle, Executioner: "Heads Should Roll"
Jonathan Franklin
US Soldier Seeks Refugee Status in Canada
Al Krebs
The Liberal "Intelligentsia" v. Nader
Josh Frank
Nader's Nadir? Not a Chance
Bruce Jackson
Nader, Another View: "He's as Evil as Bush"
Gary Leupp
A Misguided
Attack, The Passion, Rabbi Lerner and the Gospels
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.
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March
10, 2004
Operation Enduring Sweatshop
Another
Bush Brings Hell to Haiti
By CHRIS FLOYD
This week, the Bush administration added another
violent "regime change" notch to its gunbelt, toppling
the democratically elected president of Haiti and replacing him
with an unelected gang of convicted killers, death squad leaders,
militarists, narcoterrorists, CIA operatives, hereditary elitists
and corporate predators - a bit like Team Bush itself, in other
words.
Although the 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 Haitian press, controlled by cronies
of the former dictators, supplied the lazy American media with
reams of stories about Aristide's "tyranny." These
were swiftly followed by thunderous denunciations from the Bush
Regime. Wholesale murders of government officials and Aristide
partisans by Bush-backed opposition gangs were, of course, demurely
ignored - as were Aristide's own condemnations of violence by
his supporters. The old reliable "madman" trope was
also brought out for an airing, with constant press drumbeats
about Aristide's "mental instability." (America's designated
targets are always "deranged monsters," although sometimes,
when they prove politically useful again, they miraculously recover
their wits, like Libya's Moamar Gadafy.)
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." Are you kidding? Bush loves that
stuff - witness his eager embrace of the nuke-peddling dictatorship
of Pakistan, the human-boiling hardman of Uzbekistan, the torture-happy
tyrant of Kazakhstan, the drug-running warlords of Afghanistan,
and so forth.
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.
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 called for an international
force to stem the terrorist attack, Bush refused. 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. When Aristide
asked for American protection as the rebel gang closed in on
the capital, Bush refused.
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!
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. Now Bush, just
like his father, has overthrown Aristide, and for the same reason:
he represented a threat to their "natural order" -
unchecked rule by thuggish elites, gorging on the toil and blood
of others. Terrorism, despotism, torture, WMD trafficking: all
of these can countenanced, even embraced. But the alternative
offered, imperfectly, by Aristide - democratic, capitalist, but
with "a prejudice for the poor," as enjoined by the
Gospels - this evil can never be tolerated.
Chris Floyd
is a columnist for the Moscow Times and a regular contributor
to CounterPunch. His CounterPunch piece on Rumsfeld's
plan to provoke terrorist attacks came in at Number 4
on Project Censored's final tally of the Most Censored stories
of 2002. He can be reached at: cfloyd72@hotmail.com
Weekend
Edition Features for March 6 / 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Understanding the World with
Paul Sweezy
Robert Pollin
Remembering Paul Sweezy
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Timber Theft
Tom Reeves
Bush's Mass Deportations: 63,000 and Counting
Charles Lewis
Who Mugged Howard Dean in Iowa:
Kerry, Torricelli and a Mysterious Frontgroup
Tom Jackson
My Breakfast with Sen. Judd Gregg
Kurt Nimmo
Is Venezuela Next?
Alan Cisco
A Report from Caracas
Jack Random
Haitian Democracy be Damned
Colin Piquette
Oh, Canada: the Coup Coalition
Lee Sustar
Labor's State of Emergency
William D. Hartung
Iraq and the Costs of War
David Sally
Rebuilding
Amérique
Mark Scaramella
When God Mooned Moses: Test Your Bible Knowledge
Mickey Z.
What We Can Learn from Ashcroft's Gallbladder
Ron Jacobs
Politics and Baseball
Dave Zirin
The Longest Jump: the Blackballing of Phil Shinnick
Poets' Basement
John Holt and Larry Kearney
Website of the Weekend
National Day of Action for Rachel Corrie
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