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Today's
Stories
February 14/15, 2004
Stan Goff
Beloved Haiti
February 13, 2004
Alan Maass
Kevin
Cooper's Fight to Live
Karyn Strickler
McCarthyism in the Sierra Club
Annie Higgins
On
a Street in America
Adam Federman
Democratic Snipers Target Nader
Mike Whitney
George W. Faces the Nation
Brian Cloughley
Our Imperial Leader Has Spoken
Website of the Day
Lying Action Figure Doll
February 12, 2004
Ray McGovern
George
Tenet's Spin Cycle
Robert Jensen
Bush's
Nuclear Hypocrisy
Saul Landau
Elegy to the Salton Sea
February
11, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Hail, Kerry: Senator Facing-Both-Ways
Steve Perry
Bush
v. Bush?
February
10, 2004
Kurt
Nimmo
Inquisition in Iowa
Ron Jacobs
Politics and the Beatles: Don't
You Know You Can Count Me Out (In)
Elizabeth
Schulte
The Many Faces of John Kerry
Mickey
Z
Meet the Oxmans: "The Rich
Shouldn't Sleep at Night Either"
February
9, 2004
Michael
Donnelly
Will Skull and Bones Really Change
CEOs? Inside John Kerry's Closet
Chris Floyd
Smells Like Team Spirit: the Bush
B-Boys Replay Their Greatest Hits
Bill
Christison
What's Wrong with the CIA?
Dr. Susan
Block
Janet Jackson's Mammary Moment:
Boob Tube Super Bowl
February
7/8, 2004
Kathleen
Christison
Offending Valerie: Dealing with
Jewish Self-Absorption
Jeff Ballinger
No Sweat Shopping
Dave
Lindorff
Spray and Pray in Iraq: a Marine
in Transit
Alexander
Cockburn
McNamara: the Sequel
February
6, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Are the Kurds in the Way?
Joanne
Mariner
Anita Bryant's Legacy
Saul
Landau
Happiness and Botox
Kurt Nimmo
Horror Non-fiction: A How-To Guide
from Perle and Frum
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The Real Intelligence Failure:
Our Own
February
5, 2004
Benjamin
Shepard
Turning NYC into a Patriot Act Free
Zone
Khury
Petersen-Smith
A Report from Occupied Iraq: "We Don't Want Army USA"
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
The 10 Worst Corporations of 2003
Teresa
Josette
The Exeuctioner's Pslam? Christian Nation? Yeah, Right
David Krieger
Why Dr. King's Message on Vietnam is Relevant to Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
Monkey Business: Of Recess and Evolution in Georgia Schools
Norman
Solomon
The Deadly Lies of Reliable Sources
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Presenting President Edwards!
February
4, 2004
Brian
McKinlay
Bush's Australian Deputy: Howard's
Last Round Up?
Mark
Gaffney
Ariel Sharon's Favorite Senator: Ron Wyden and Israel
Judith
Brown
Palestine and the Media
Frederick
B. Hudson
Moseley-Braun and the Butcher: Campaign for Justice or Big Oil's
Junta?
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's Independent Commission: Exonerating
the Spooks
M.
Junaid Alam
Philly School Workers Fight for Fair Contract
Fran Shor
Whose Boob Tube?
Kevin
Cooper
This is Not My Execution and I Will Not Claim It
February
3, 2004
Alan
Maass
The
Dems' New Mantra: What They Really Mean by "Electability"
Nick
Halfinger
How the Other Half Lives: Embedded
in Iraq
Rahul
Mahajan
Our True Intelligence Failure
Neve Gordon
The Only Democracy in the Middle East?
Laura
Carlsen
Mexico: Two Anniversaries; Two Futures
Terry
Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Powell from the Boobs & Body Parts
Fairness Campaign
Hammond
Guthrie
Investigating the Meaningless
Website
of the Day
Waging Peace
February
2, 2004
Gary
Leupp
The Buddhist Nun in Tom Ridge's Jail
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Manners of Their Deaths: Capital Punishment in a Smoke-Free
Environment
Tom
Wright
The Prosecution of Captain Yee
Winslow
Wheeler
Inside the Bush Defense Budget
Lee Ballinger
Janet Jackson's Naked Truth
Leonard
Pitts, Jr
For Blacks, the Game of Justice is
Rigged
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Hollow Candidate:
The Trouble with Howard Dean
Website
of the Day
Resistance:
In the Eye of the American Hegemon
Jan. 31 / Feb 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
Ben
Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert
January 30, 2004
Saul
Landau
Cuba High on Neo-Con Hit List
Michael
Donnelly
Bush's Second Front: The War in
the Woods
Elaine
Cassel
Worse Than Jacko: Child Abuse at Gitmo
David Vest
More Halliburton News, Brought to You by Halliburton
Mike
Whitney
The Kay Report: Still Defending Aggression
David
Miller
The Hutton Whitewash
Sam
Husseini
How Many People Must Die Because of This "Mistake",
Senator Kerry?
January 29, 2004
Patricia
Nelson Limerick
John Ehrlichman, Environmentalist
Ron
Jacobs
Homeland Security and "Legalized"
Immigration
Rahul Mahajan
New Hampshire v. Iraq
Greg
Weiher
Bush Calls for Preemptive Strike on
Moon and Mars
Norman
Solomon
The State of the Media Union
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Does NH Mean Anything?
January
28, 2004
Kathy
Kelly
Bearing Witness Against Teachers of
Torture and Assassination
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
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Weekend
Edition
February 14/15, 2004
Beloved Haiti
A
(Counter) Revolutionary Bicentennial
By STAN GOFF
February 9, 2004.
As I write this there is an attempt to start a
civil war in Haiti, engineered in the United States of America
and supported by its lapdogs in Caricom and the Organization
of American States. Former Haitian military men who have received
"some form" of training and logistical support while
hiding out in the neighboring US semi-colony, the Dominican Republic,
are systematically attacking the Haitian National Police at primary
strategic points along the entire route from Port-au-Prince to
the Dominican Border near Ouanaminthe. Only Cap Haitien has not
fallen so far as St Marc, Gonaives, and Trou du Nord a town at
a key bridge between the border and Cap Haitien has been ransacked
by right-wing paramilitaries, who are the armed wing of a US-funded
"opposition" that cloaks itself in the name Convergence
Democratique, and now falsely claims no connection with this
activity.
The main road between Port-au-Prince
to St. Marc to Gonaives to Cap Haitien to Trou du Nord to Ouanaminthe
is often the only passable route cross country, and these seizures
have effectively cut off the western coastal towns from the capital
 and isolated Cap Haitien, the second
largest city in Haiti. At last word, these former Haitian military
units--some of the same ones who worked for the notorious Duvaliers
and for the savage Cedras-Francois junta--have abandoned St.
Marc.
The ridiculous names like Gonaives Resistance
Front that these right-wing paramilitaries have assigned themselves
are already being echoed in the capitalist press, which also
refers to them, idiotically, as "rebels," and to their
activities as the activities of "crowds." A contact
I spoke with hours ago who returned from Port-au-Prince today
told me that the real crowds are those who are fleeing these
fascist coup operations in the North and the massive PRO-Aristide
demonstrations in the capital. This contact said the situation
here is very similar in many respects to the US-supported attempt
to overthrow another democratically elected government, that
of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.
The paramilitaries have opened ships
and stores for looting, capitalizing on the desperate poverty
and hunger of Haitians to direct the energy of masses into looting,
in order to neutralize them politically. But it has only worked
locally. My contact said that contrary to what's going on here,
the Haitian masses are "crystal clear" that this is
a US-supported coup attempt.
If the legitimately elected government
of Jean-Bertrand Aristide fails to take aggressive action to
recapture these cities, there may be a successful coup within
weeks. While the tactical target of this paramilitary action
is the Aristide government, the political target is--as it always
has been--the popular sovereignty of the Haitian masses. It is
a tragic irony that this situation has developed this far on
the bicentennial of the heroic Haitian Revolution, and that it
is being led by an imperial power that wants to annihilate popular
sovereignty wherever it raises its head.
To help the reader understand what is
going on there, I am inserting my journal from the last Aristide
inauguration, and I will make some comments afterward:
FEAR AND LOATHING
IN HAITI
A journal of Aristide's inauguration
January 16-February 9, 2001
By Stan Goff
In Port-au-Prince I spend three days,
January 16-18, at Hotel Ife. If I believed in zombies--that favored
American obsession about Haiti--I will have
found them here in the doddering, light-skinned
matriarch and her stunned-looking, slow-motion staff. Like every
place in the Caribbean, but especially here, there seems to be
a perpetual stalemate in the battle with decay. Water damage
stains the ceilings. The wiring is precariously exposed.
A little spider has found a haven in
the corner of the windowsill, where no dust-rag, no broom ever
quite reaches. Electricity is rationed, available only from 5:30
PM to 4:00 AM. Street noises invade throughout the night. Motorcycles,
evangelists with loudspeakers, little brass bands, roosters even
here in the comparative affluence of Petionville. My walls are
painted a nauseating green.
The street is my refuge. The inept pretensions
of Haiti's third-string bourgeoisie, here in the streets at least,
are diffused, swallowed up by the frenetic culture of survival
that animates these byways, the chaos of the pure market, of
truly primitive accumulation. Here is a cornucopia of commodities,
fruits, breads, soaps, cigarettes, plastic shoes, cheap watches,
steaming food, sold right on the sidewalk out of bowls and baskets.
Here are trash, skiddish animals foraging in filth, and a wild-west
intermixing of foot and vehicle traffic. Pure utility without
the sophisticated facade we associate with the chimera of "development."
No set prices anywhere. Every exchange
alternates between belligerence, laughter, feigned pain at an
insult--an appearance of extreme interpersonal tension to the
blan (white or foreign), but this is a game that animates the
entire culture, this ribbing and debating, these loud voices
with the plosive cadences. A rough culture with a lot of ritual
combat.
The streets of Petionville, the most
affluent section of the capital, are named after heroes of the
Revolution for Independence. But the names are selective; Chavannes,
Petion, Rigaud, Oge. Mulattos all. The only exception is L'Overture,
the ex-slave general who led the first stage of the Revolution,
when slavery was abolished. Toussaint L'Overture was black. But
like Aristide today, he was a conciliator. He never desired nor
demanded independence. So the color-obsessed capital elite rehabilitated
him into the good black.
The mulattos of the Revolution never
wanted to throw off the French, the blan. They wanted to replace
them and grow rich on the sweat of the former slaves.
Indeed, many themselves owned slaves
before the Revolution. To this day they contemptuously call the
black peasant the gwo zoteey, the big toes.
Conspicuous among the names unlisted
among the Petionville streets is Dessalines. After the French
duped L'Overture and sent him to die in a putrid cell, Dessalines
led the bloody march to independence.
Class memory is long in Haiti, and Dessalines
was feared by the privileged mulattos. He had the personal power
to mobilize the masses. In one engagement, at Crete Pierrot in
1802, he rallied 900 ex-slave soldiers and civilians to reject
surrender and break out of an encirclement of 16,000 French soldiers,
a feat of arms astounding by any measure in any war in history.
After Napolean's legions were vanquished,
the mulattos claimed the land based on the property deeds of
their white fathers. Dessalines asked them what the former slaves
who led the Revolution would get. The mulattos were champing
at the bit to begin a vigorous and lucrative trade with France
and the rest of Europe.
Dessalines, who had seen French perfidy
and brutality reassert itself at every opportunity, shed his
shirt to show them the mass of lash scars covering his coal-black
back, and told them with no equivocation, he was done with the
whites.
The mulattos foresaw their anticipated
fortunes dwindle to naught.
The United States, only just independent
itself, fattening on the plunder of indigenous land and the labor
of slaves, was alarmed as well. These rebel slaves to the south
had just smashed the myth of white supremacy by outwitting and
out-generaling three European nations, awakening the American
slave-holder's latent terror of black insurrection.
While Dessalines massacred the French
in Cap Haitien, winning infamy among white historians, the mulattos
plotted. They assassinated Dessalines in 1806 and forbade his
name to be spoken for 40 years. Their subsequent repression of
the mass of former rebels was ferocious. This ferocity was motivated
by the one true constant of almost 200 years of Haitian ruling
class history--dread of the masses. Dessalines had to go because
he could mobilize the masses.
It would be a mistake, however, to generalize
from Dessalines' confrontation with the mulattos to a description
of Haiti's current social antagonisms as a color problem. The
black grandons of the north are as avaricious and cynical as
the whitest compradeur, and just as terrified of popular rebellion.
The color line has blurred, but the class lines are still razor
sharp.
Haiti's struggle is a class struggle,
pure if not simple. Color is just part of the context, the psychology.
Look at the Bush cabinet, if you think reactionaries are afraid
of melanin.
In my walks down these streets named
after Dessalines' nemeses, I find an internet cafe of all things.
Here is a place I can check email, surf a bit on the web, stay
connected with my family who I have deserted yet again.
January 19, 2001. A fellow Haiti-phile
has forwarded me an article by email about the confirmation hearings
of Colin Powell. The hearings are, of course, a love-fest. Powell
wears white denial as his personal armor--the almost-Black Knight.
No one dares speak the forbidden--My Lai, Panama, Iraq. No one
can acknowledge--on pain of political suicide--that this man
is a brilliant hack, a well-groomed ticket puncher who will order
the annihilation of thousands of innocents, but whose real talent
is hiding the bodies. The obsequious, lily-white Senators ask
him about Haiti, this almost-a-negro and a West Indian to boot,
and he doesn't hesitate. He puts Haiti firmly in its place.
The reactionary wing of the Republican
Party will settle for nothing less than Aristide's political
neutralization. Aristide needs to look at the history of the
war on Iraq, at the Rambouillet Agreement. The demands will escalate
until they are simply impossible to meet. They will ask for the
keys, for the surrender of sovereignty.
The Administration of George W. Bush,
Powell explains, will tentatively accept the grotesque capitulation
of a wavering Aristide to reschedule the legitimate elections
of several of his own party members in response to a US/OAS campaign
of demagogy to discredit those elections. It is a breathtaking
betrayal by
Aristide. Powell calls this acquiescent,
nay, submissive posture "an appropriate road map to get
started," but adds that the Administration can not rule
out additional demands. No careful Clintonesque camouflage from
this administration. The colonial relation will be naked and
unashamed. U.S. policy, the Secretary of State-designee explains,
always has been and always will be to keep Haitians from coming
to the United States, and on their knees at home.
My companion for this trip and a friend
for the last four years, Harry Numa, Secretary of the Pati Popile
Nasyonal (PPN), the National Popular Party, is very focused on
the upcoming Haitian presidential inauguration of Jean-Bertrand
Aristide. I have copied the post about Colin Powell and shared
it with him and other members.
"Is Colin Powell an Uncle Tom,"
one asks me. He and his comrades have just exploded in a babble
of outrage at the imperial arrogance of Powell's remarks.
"Is he a token?"
"Uncle Tom was a phrase of contempt
that Malcolm X used to differentiate the house slave from the
field slave," I say. "Powell has transcended that.
He is no longer just the house slave. He is now one of the masters.
He is a brilliant bureaucrat. Hardly a token.
"Many people regard an Uncle Tom
to be someone who is witless, a fool who sells out his own people.
Clarence Thomas is an Uncle Tom who is not terribly intelligent.
Powell is no fool. He is ruthless and very, very smart. Powell
is more than an Uncle Tom. Powell is evil."
Heads nod. This is a distinction easily
grasped in Haiti, where foolishness and villainy have shared
a lot of spotlights.
"Aristide is making a terrible mistake,"
one explains. "He has this tremendous power, and he refuses
to use it, even when people threaten him with violence."
They believe Aristide is straying. Fanmi
Lavalas, the party of this ex-priest, is organized more like
the church than a political formation. He remains, however, in
many ways, a political naif. He's never understood the dominant
class' terror of the people--now his own inescapable sin.
They are referring to Aristide's tolerance
and capitulation before the sometimes-violent provocation of
something now referred to as "the opposition." So I
need to understand clearly why the PPN, this growing, highly
conscious left political formation, organizing relentlessly among
the gwo zoteey, is defending Aristide. And they are. Critically,
but doggedly.
As an American, steeped in the narrow
rhetorical strategies of a politics of personality--Gore, Bush,
Buchanan, Nader--I am unaccustomed to people looking beyond the
talking heads and the so-called platforms to the social forces
that underwrite them.
Even as we are inaugurating our own de
facto regime--the idiot prince, Dubya, and the court of his father,
the imanence grise--the Haitian "opposition" is swearing
Aristide will never sit. February 7th is his inauguration, and
they have not only denounced it as "illegal and illegitimate,"
they have formed their own "parallel" government. Some
have claimed that "extra-Constitutional means" will
be employed if necessary.
Who is the "opposition," whose
latest handle is Convergence Democratique? It's always French.
The name.
"The dominant class speaks French,"
Harry says. "But all Haitians speak Kreyol. When the dominant
class doesn't want the people to know what it's doing, it speaks
in French."
Convergence is the latest in a line of
"opposition" coalitions. During their failed attempt
to buy the last election, fueled by American dollars from the
National Endowment for Democracy, the dominant formation was
called Espace de Concertacion. The name changed, but many of
the people are the same. All believe that in the shadows, behind
the curtain of these "oppositions," are macoutes and
the U.S. Embassy's Political Section, aka the CIA.
Convergence is eclectic. Pasteur Luc
Mesadieu, a Protestant fundamentalist, Gerard Pierre Charles,
ex-communist turned chief bourgeois ideologue, Serge Gilles,
long-time representative for French political interests in Haiti,
Evans Paul, former mayor of Port-au-Prince whose party the FNCD
Aristide cut out of his cabinet in 1991, Victor Benoit, an ex
radio personality and perennial political lightweight with no
clear positions, but who "shows up" at every new "initiative,"
Hubert de Roncerey, Baby Doc's Minister of Social Affairs who
in that capacity acted as slave-trader for the Dominican cane
plantations, and fellow Duvalierist, Reynold George, a man widely
believed here to have been involved in drug trafficking.
This is to whom the "free"
press of the United States refers when they cite the Haitian
"opposition." Convergence plays them like a perch on
light tackle. The Haitian press, emulating the master, gives
this 15- mini-party coalition's machinations plenty of air time
and directly assists their legitimation.
Every faction of the Haitian dominant
class, factions who are generally at war with one another, is
represented in Convergence. Their one point of agreement? They
are all opposed to Aristide.
There have been no smoking guns, but
when they threatened violence, the level of violence escalated.
When they threatened bombs, there were bombs. Two alleged coup-plotting
cells have already fled this year to avoid arrest, one to the
Dominican Republic, the other to Ecuador. In no case has the
United States political establishment or the obedient corporate
press called for investigations or expressed an iota of outrage.
But on January 9th, a small affiliate
of Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party, the Ti Komunite Leglis (TKL)
had one chapter that made a veiled threat in response to the
announcement of Convergence that it would launch its "parallel
government," They produced a list of "collaborators,"
some of whose names were patently ridiculous. Fanmi Lavalas is
largely, and regrettably, unstructured. Loose cannons appear
with some frequency. But it was a threat, not terribly specific,
with no action taken. It was a hotheaded and inappropriate reaction
to a very real campaign to reverse the popular will. Still, the
shit storm followed from up North.
Republican Congressmen Benjamin Gillman
(NY) and Peter Goss (FL) made headlines with their joint denouncement.
"In speaking at the church of St. Jean Bosco, the men issuing
these threats clearly suggested to Haitians that they were speaking
for Mr. Jean-Bertrand Aristide... ...Instead of keeping his promises
to President Clinton [to reschedule elections of previously elected
Senators, and other capitulations], Mr. Aristide is condoning
by his silence thuggish acts of violence in his name." Of
course, there were no "acts." But facts have never
been obstacles to Republicans. And there was deafening silence
from Gillman, Goss, and all the rest, when weeks earlier Evans
Paul called for Haitian drivers to run down Fanmi Lavalas in
the streets.
Harry Numa: "These attacks on Aristide
from Convergence and the reactionaries will continue regardless
of what concessions Aristide makes. It is not Aristide they hate,
but his connection to the masses that they fear. He was elected
with 92 percent of the vote. This is a terrible power as they
see it."
There it is again. The one true constant.
Harry and many others wish Aristide would
use his immense power to respond decisively to the attacks, but
they fear the worst. Aristide could very well be another Peron.
He began as a nationalist and a populist, but under incessant
pressure and with more than a little personal ambition, he is
being co-opted through his own desire to be a conciliator. He
may inevitably shift to the right. Indeed, Aristide is already
offering an olive branch to Marc Bazin, former World Bank representative,
the U.S. supported candidate against Aristide in 1991, a member
of the subsequent coup regime's cabinet, and the darling of the
U.S. neoliberal establishment.
"Who cares how the Bush Administration
will react if he mobilizes the population against Convergence?"
asks Numa. "Convergence and the U.S. want him out, whether
he does or not... because he can. We have a saying in Haiti.
If you don't say 'Good morning' to the devil, he will eat you.
If you do say
'Good morning' to the devil... he will
eat you."
Lavalas itself is horizontal, lacking
structure. The handful of American petit bourgeois radicals who
know anything about Haiti at all see this as somehow democratic,
opposing hierarchy to democracy, an absurd polarity. Aristide
is alone, floating atop this sea of cliques, each with its little
head, and each of them competing for the favor of the President.
The whole organization is shot through with fractions and opportunism.
PPN's sharp criticisms of Aristide aside,
they defend him not because of some personal quality and not
based on his program, but because he was chosen by
Haiti's majority, unlike Dubya, who seized
power through a judicial coup d'etat. "The population selected
him, and if he betrays them, the population can reject him. We
are not defending just Aristide. We are defending the people's
right to select their own leaders. And we are defending our sovereignty."
Ben Dupuy, former Ambassador-at-Large
for Aristide during the 1991-4 coup period, says, "He will
make mistakes. He has made mistakes. But the people have the
right to be wrong."
They were incensed at the demagogic attacks
on the Haitian elections by the U.S., and our own tragi-comic
electoral conundrum only reinforced the offense.
The PPN people I talk to admit that this
fight among politicos--focused for the time being against Aristide--is
really a family feud, a tussle among the bourgeoisie_the land-bourgeoisie
(macoutes), the trade-bourgeoisie (compradors), the lumpen-bourgeoisie
(drug traffickers)--that has been temporarily set aside to close
ranks against this man who has captured the imagination of the
ominous many. Aristide is conciliating with them on every front,
but he can never escape their terminal fear of his rapport with
the great potentiality.
And the mighty Northern metropole is
involved. It's to the hegemon these plotters always turn in a
pinch. So this is not just an internal matter, not just Haiti
inventing itself. With the Bush regime in, the old CIA covert
operations branch will be strengthened. The macoute sector that
they conspired with to construct the FRAPH, the right-wing terrorists
of the Cedras-Francois era, will be strengthened with them. After
all, organizing is based on existing relationships.
The options are not pretty for Convergence,
but the threats are out there. They have said they will not tolerate
this "illegal" government of Aristide. "They feel
they can not afford to look like it's all a bluff," Harry
says. Haiti is a backward society, and machismo matters. Reputations
and rumors can have the power of bombs and bullets.
There are a lot of variables. The Police
Nacionale d'Haiti (PNH) are not cohesive in their political loyalties.
If they took sides at all in a fight, they would be fragmented,
and many would side with Aristide. Others, aggressively recruited
during the U.S. occupation by the CIA, might move against. But
it's a wild card. So a coup might have to be privatized. A group
of re-armed Fraphists perhaps, with the tacit approval of their
old CIA handlers. Of course this kind of putsch is a very risky
option. Alleged conspirators are already on the international
lam. [Now in 2004 it appears we will see exactly what has been
agreed upon. -SG]
Assassination of Aristide is also very
risky. Aristide's assassination would ignite a conflagration.
The only way this might work is if they could convince the Dominicans
to intervene. Post-assassination turbulence creates the fear
that this instability will spill across the Dominican border,
so the Dominicans have their pretext to invade. We have this
discussion in the last week of January, and this particular speculation
will prove prescient.
Ah, the dilemmas of power!
Bush's National Security Advisor, Condoleeza
Rice, a fellow oil-person who shares the Bush thirst for Southwest
Asian petroleum, and who has promised a
Kissinger-like realpolitik, says this
administration will only intervene with direct military force
when there is a clear and compelling interest for the U.S. ruling
class. She advocates having our allies shoulder more of the load
in the periphery--a question of economy of force. Allies like
the Dominicans.
This is also consistent with the Powell
Doctrine for the U.S. military. Begin with a measurable objective.
Apply overwhelming high-tech force and limit American casualties
to an absolute minimum. Gain control over the press, and give
complacent America its morality play.
No, American invasion is surely no recipe
for Haiti. They can bomb the existing infrastructure into an
ash heap and it will leave 75 percent of the country yawning.
Infrastructure? What's that? The international press can enter
Haiti through its porous borders with near impunity. And the
last occupation, beginning in 1994, in which I participated,
is an indication of what the next would be... indeterminate,
intimidating no one for more than a moment, and a risk that our
own soldiers--especially black soldiers--will see more than they
ought of our own government's motives and methods.
Haiti is slippery. It's hard to get hold
of. Sometimes it bites.
"If the Dominicans invade, and Aristide
is dead," says Numa, "then the OAS can be invited in
to relieve them. The U.S. can then play a role of post-crisis
benevolence as it restructures Haiti to suit itself." This
is mass paranoia if it is paranoia at all. This strategy is one
the U.S. has employed again and again. Americans even wrote Haiti's
Constitution once.
These transparent pretexts for intervention
are not for Haitian consumption. The average illiterate peasant
knows bullshit when she or he sees it, literally and figuratively.
Their experience with both is vast. These pretexts are for us,
the blan, the Americans. We are the real market for political
snake oil, for rationalization, for Manichean simplicity, for
denial.
January 27, 2001. Convergence has its
conference, one they have projected would draw 20,000 supporters.
Three hundred would be much closer to the mark.
They changed the location, because the
giant Rex Theater at Champ de Mars feared popular outrage against
them. It is a stroke of luck, in a sense. The Rex would have
dwarfed them with the low turnout. They end up having it at OPL
headquarters.
The government, anxious to avoid all
criticism, dispatches a phalanx of PNH to provide security for
Convergence. Threats have been called in. Indeed, arrests are
made when two men are caught with anti-Convergence leaflets and
bag loads of throwing stones. Oddly, it's Convergence who appeals
for their release. Both men are identified as members of a Convergence
affiliate.
Had this charade not been unmasked, the
State Department and the New York Times would doubtless have
been decrying, a la Gillman and Goss, Aristide-inspired acts
of violence.
January 31, 2001. The Dominicans have
mobilized all available armed forces to the Haitian border, ostensibly
to interdict "drug traffic." Overnight, whatever drugs
may or may not cross from Haiti to the Dominican Republic have
become " a threat to Dominican sovereignty."
The mediated meeting between Aristide
and Convergence, to be facilitated by the Papal Nuncio, scheduled
for the 31st, didn't take place. No one is sure
why. Convergence has announced a new
deadline to name the "parallel government." February
6th. The day before Aristide's nomination. Convergence has been
emboldened by Aristide's display of weakness, his legitimizing
of Convergence by offering to "negotiate."
"If you give the thief your finger,"
says Numa. "He will take off your hand."
The PPN believes that Convergence, cockier
now with Dubya coronated, may be planning some kind of destabilization
on the 6th. If the inauguration doesn't take place on schedule,
the Constitution requires the government to be dissolved, which
triggers new elections. They might try to engineer a Constitutional
crisis. If this fails, Aristide might be in great danger.
February 1, 2001. On the news this morning,
we hear that a Chilean general has threatened trouble if Pinochet
is imprisoned. The successful coup of George W. Bush is rousing
reaction from its sleep across the world. There's a whiff of
blood in the air. The fascists are flashing their teeth.
There were a few demonstrations after
the Bush judicial coup, but America tossed a bit then fell back
to sleep. The vast majority of us watched the theft of our own
elections, wrung our hands for a day, and went shopping. Blan
will eat anything.
No one says the Haitians can't also be
distracted, bamboozled, manipulated. A fair number of people
here still believe in werewolves and witches (instead of
Scientology and CNN, I suppose). But
their exploitation at the hands of the dominant classes is brutally
direct, unadorned, and unabashed. It doesn't take a PhD. And
the Haitian collective memory about the foreign policy establishments
of the United States is crisp and current.
I leave the little hotel I'm in, La Jolla,
perched between affluence on the right along the seawalk and
the survival grind on the left where shacks along a potted road
climb unsteadily over the deforested hill. I'm hungry.
Even my modest hotel wants more than
I can afford right now for food. It's French.
The first restaurant I drop in on, where
they ran out of butter yesterday, is closed until five for cleaning.
I try the Brise de Mer. Very nice. Very expensive. Up the hill
I walk, until I see the sign for Mont Joli Hotel--a hangout for
macoutes, partisans of the semi-feudals who dominate the north.
But I just survived a bout with untreated
water over the last two days, so I need "safe" food
to give my frangible blan gut a little cover.
There is spaghetti bolognaise on the
menu for only $20 Haitian, that's $4 US since the gourd had a
dip last week (Every cent of inflation is disastrous news for
Haiti.).
I am seated in a paradise, next to the
pool, nice breeze, the great bay visible only beginning past
the coffee colored ribbon of excreta along the littoral. The
architecture is exquisite. The landscaping is lush, diverse,
brilliant, perfectly cared for. The breeze animates the palms.
Silent waves flash against the distant reef, surrounded by delicious
blues below and above the horizon.
The rich do truly understand beauty.
That's undeniable right here, right now. And it comes cheap right
here, right now.
Every tile, every arrangement of chairs,
every careful touch in the gardens, every attentive gesture in
this restaurant is applied by people who will make less money
today than I am paying for this plate of spaghetti.
The French have arrived for lunch. Four
of them sit at a table near mine, with their briefcases, their
open collars, their ledgers, their calculators. They are in very
good spirits. It's a marvelous day, they're making money, and
they have good appetites.
They are pilot fish, I find myself thinking.
The Big Blan is still Uncle Sam.
I know. I've studied the history, and
I've done the math. Most here have no need of the data, the dates,
the tortured analyses.
Many Haitians are so confident of U.S.
official pronouncements that they use them like a compass. When
the U.S. Embassy expresses it aims, it's like a north-seeking
arrow--which they use to travel directly to the south. Experience.
The French speaking radio stations give
a daily platform to something calling itself Societe Civil, a
component of Convergence led by Rosny DeRoche, the president
of Baby Doc's alma mater, College Bird. Societe Civil is composed
of a professional elite; bishops, professors, economists and
their ilk. They are perceived as a kind of ultimate legitimizing
force, having mastered the smooth Orwellian mush of their northern
mentors.
Prime Minister Jacques Eduoard Alexis
seems the only soul in the public eye who isn't speaking in riddles
and innuendos. He has almost daily denounced this whole Convergence
charade. It's refreshing in a sea of mountebanks to hear this
resounding cry of "Bullshit!"
February 5, 2000. Convergence had presented
a "proposal" to Aristide's people. They will accept
a three-person "co-presidency" with Aristide and two
of their people. They also want the Prime Minister's position.
This is, in Haiti, where most executive power resides, and by
the Haitian Constitution, the Prime Minister is appointed by
the President from the majority party in Parliament--which is
Fanmi Lavalas. It is a demand so absurd on its face that my comrades,
who compulsively chase news across the radio dial, hear it and
fall out with laughter.
I think of Rambouillet, and wonder when
Powell will do the yeoman's job that Madeline Albright did.
Fanmi Lavalas says they will prepare
a counter-proposal. The clock is ticking.
In Petit Goave, a group of young thugs
claiming the grandiose title of Jeunes Revolucionaires--yet another
affiliate of Convergence--attempt a dechoukage
against the Lavalas mayor. An uprooting.
The attack is met by a massive demonstration and withdraws. Convergence
grows desperate. Representatives of
the international community are declaring
they will attend Aristide's inauguration. No one from the de
facto regime of the United States will attend.
February 6. Gerard Gourges, former Justice
Minister under the regime of macoute General Henri Namphy, circa
1986, is declared the Provisional President of Haiti by Convergence.
Popular outrage erupts in response to the attack in Petit Goave,
in Gonaives, historically a hotbed of popular militancy. Pasteur
Silvio Diendonne of Movement Chretien por une Nouvelle Haiti
(MOCHRENAH), a local spokesperson for Convergence, is met by
a large street demonstration led by Organizasyon Popile d' Gonaives,
a Lavalas affiliate.
The streets across Haiti fill. Paper
flags and paint, blue and red, the colors of the Haitian flag,
since Dessalines' independence fighters ripped the white out
of the French tricolor, begins to decorate every tree and stone.
Aristide's power makes itself felt.
February 7, 2001. 7 AM. Inauguration
day. I am underslept. Drunken revelry and music dominated the
street last night, and I have been sleeping on the roof. My room
stays hot at night and fills with mosquitoes. I have watched
the moon fill out over the last seven nights.
We have just heard on the radio that
Dominican soldiers are occupying the Hotel El Rancho in Port-au-Prince
for three days. How many we don't know. Anpil. A lot. They are
ostensibly there to give President Mejia of the Dominican Republic
security, but Mejia has now canceled. He has his army to think
about, holding him in check, making him a partial president.
And the Dominican Armed Forces work for the United States Department
of Defense.
The first word to pop into my fuzzy,
sleepless head is reconnaissance. I may be getting paranoid.
Accounts are that the capital was quickened
throughout the night with Lavalas parties and demonstrations.
The U.S. State Department is warning Americans not to travel
to Haiti. They are claiming extreme danger. I've seen this pre-conditioning
before. The warning is not to protect, but to leave an impression--part
of the set-up. Every U.S. Embassy has its Political Section.
That's double-talk for CIA. The combination of macoute and CIA
here is known as labwatwa, the laboratory. The whole place reeks
of the laboratory's concoctions today. I can't help remembering
that it waited eight months to poison the last Aristide presidency,
but there is an urgency crackling in the air around the centers
of reaction here.
Aristide gives his inauguration speech
in four languages. It's a masterful performance. Aristide reiterates
his commitment to kowtow to the eight-point plan, and as much
as swears fealty to neoliberalism. Joe Kennedy is the sole U.S.
representative, so he quotes JFK. "Ask not what your country
can do for you..." In an orgy of obsequiousness, he calls
for brotherhood with the Dominicans. He promises dialogue with
his "opposition." He promises countless kilometers
of roads, new schools, hospitals, bread. He is setting up his
own fall with that remarkable religious naivete.
Over a hundred thousand people clamor
in the street for him. They are energized by their deathless
hope. Convergence decided, wisely, to withdraw its plan for counter-demonstration.
Their last demonstration netted fewer than 200 people.
Paul Denis of Convergence resorts to
archaic demagogy: "We refuse to see a totalitarian hegemonic
regime installed, founded on violence and constructed on anarchy,
assassinations, crime, and generalized, daily, constant violence."
This from a man who consorts now with Duvalierists. When the
last coup happened, Aristide took refuge in his home, and 8,000
people surrounded his house, putting themselves between him and
the military's guns. The mighty latency of this people has carried
him through yet another crisis and checked his enemies. Even
as he sets them up for a fall. The people have a right to be
wrong.
Convergence withdraws to lick their wounds
and confer with blan. The Dominicans check out of the hotel.
On the border they begin to stand down.
Here in Cap Haitien, where I now sit,
one can see the mountains folded, layer upon receding layer along
the northern coast. No people understand the principle of protracted
struggle better than Haitians. Deye mon, gen mon. Beyond every
mountain, is a mountain. Their rebellion has been punished, from
home and abroad, for 197 years. When these resilient masses finally
see through the fog of these internecine battles for privilege,
position, and power, there will be hell to pay.
Another day: Two peasants lead us now
on a foot tour of the region around Marmelade. My age catches
up with me, and I beg for the mercy of a halt. If this country
were flattened out, it would be the size of Texas, I think. The
word Haiti is Arawak for mountain. And some 5 or 6 million wills
are daily forged on these breathless slopes.
Aristide, the conciliator, may go the
way of Toussaint L'Overture, or perhaps he will find the spirit
of Dessalines. Plenty of people here still name their children
Dessalines. Dessalines' own DNA has by now been broadcast throughout
his nation. New Year's Day, 2004, is the Revolutionary Bicentennial,
and it's in people's heads--the work left undone.
There is a new saying on the street here.
Why should we be afraid of one Bush, when we are 8 million bouches?
Bring it on. We can take anything.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the revolution
will not be televised..."
-the end-
Back to 2004: All warnings that the finger
would give way to the hand are coming to pass. Hopefully the
Aristide government will take all action necessary to secure
the nation, and if they do they will be vilified by the US press.
That's why we need to get this story out there now, so there
is at least some perspective to help the left avoid heading down
the wrong path. Aristide needs to wage a ruthless fight to retake
each of those towns in turn, to acknowledge that the macouto-bourgeoisie
is waging a civil war, and to state that this is war, openly,
in order to do what is necessary. If not, then the right-wing
paramilitaries will maintain the initiative, they will operate
within the logic of war, and they will topple Aristide's government
and clamp down yet again on popular sovereignty, with assistance
from the hegemon to the north.
I have no doubt that by-and-by the heroic
people of Haiti will fight back if it becomes necessary, but
for now their fight is to root out this imperial infection.
The question has been called in Haiti.
Sovereignty or subjugation. This is the stark choice, and the
time for conciliation is past. Now it is time for Dessalines.
Viv Ayiti!
To stay abreast of developments in Haiti
without relying on the capitalist press, go to the English section
of www.haiti-progres.com.
Stan Goff
is the author of "Hideous
Dream: A Soldier's Memoir of the US Invasion of Haiti"
(Soft Skull Press, 2000) and of the upcoming book "Full
Spectrum Disorder" (Soft Skull Press, 2003). He is a
member of the BRING
THEM HOME NOW! coordinating committee, a retired Special
Forces master sergeant, and the father of an active duty soldier.
Email for BRING THEM HOME NOW! is bthn@mfso.org.
Goff can be reached at: sherrynstan@igc.org
Weekend
Edition Features for February 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
Ben
Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert
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