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Today's
Stories
March 19, 2004
Vicente Navarro
The End of Aznar, Bush's Best
Friend
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
March 11, 2004
Ron Jacobs
Bedtime
for Democracy
Bill Kauffman
Hey,
Ralph! Why Not Another Party of the People?
James Hollander
Slaughter
in Madrid: Consolidating an Ally?
Norman Solomon
They
Shoot Journalists, Don't They?
Patrick Gavin
The Salvation of Dan Quayle: Family Values Return
Becky Burgwin
You're
Messing with the Wrong Generation
John Sugg
The FBI is on My Trail
March 10, 2004
Hammond Guthrie
Read
This Book!: "Who the Hell is Stew Albert?"
Chris Floyd
Operation Enduring Sweatshop: Another
Bush Brings Hell to Haiti
Elizabeth Corrie
Remembering the Death of Rachel Corrie
Mike Whitney
US Press Torpedoes Aristide
M. Junaid Alam
An Anti-Civilizational War?
Bob Feldman
The Occupation of Haiti: Recalling 1915-1934
John L. Hess
An Overload of Crises
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
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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for More Stories.
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March
19, 2004
Haiti and the Impotence of Black America
Roll
Back this Coup, Mr. Bush
By CYNTHIA McKINNEY
Former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney
delivered this address March 6 at a UC Berkeley conference titled
"The Role of Law & Policy: Africa, the Caribbean &
the U.S." sponsored by the African-American Law and Policy
Report.
Nowhere do we see the impotence of Black America
played out before our eyes and those of the world as we now see
in the case of Haiti. But let me add that it hasn't always been
this way, and it doesn't have to be this way.
First of all, as I see it, the correct
call is not just for investigation, but also for reinstallation.
Just as the U.S., in the 1950s, launched its policy of rollback
for communism, so too must Americans of good conscience call
for the Bush gang of thieves to roll back the coup in Haiti.
If you will recall, the United States
and Haiti have been in this exact same place before. Gen. Raul
Cedras had stolen power in a coup against the democratically
elected priest who worked in the barrios of Port-au-Prince. Haitian
Americans in Florida and New York and elsewhere worked non-stop
to reinstall Father Aristide to power.
The Republican Justice Department had
just overseen the largest expansion of the Congressional Black
Caucus since the passage of the Voting Rights Act as it forced
Southern legislatures to draw districts that would allow rural
Blacks finally to elect candidates of their choice. Black voters,
with a massive turnout, had turned George Bush's father out of
the White House and elected Bill Clinton instead.
So the stage was set on the inside and
on the outside for a massive shift in U.S. policy toward Haiti,
leaving the Republican antipathy for Aristide behind. This shift
so infuriated at least one small group in white America that,
in the Florida redistricting case, the plaintiff actually wrote
that the increased strength of the Congressional Black Caucus
had actually changed U.S. policy toward Haiti, and for that reason,
among others, the size of the CBC had grown too large, thus the
lawsuit against the district of Congresswoman Corrine Brown.
The brief of the Florida plaintiffs provides
a smoking gun for the effectiveness of the larger, stronger,
younger Black Caucus that entered Washington with an agenda grounded
in the people. It also places in stark relief what is possible
when Black America has authentic leaders, well placed, in politics.
Eventually, Cedras was given money and
escorted out of Port-au-Prince while some of the leaders of FRAPH,
the CIA-inspired tonton macoute replacement, found refuge in
the U.S., the Dominican Republic and other places. With most
of his term spent out of office, Aristide eventually was triumphantly
returned to office. Upon the expiration of his term, Aristide
left office and ran for reelection after the end of the term
of his successor, Rene Preval.
Now, according to one of my investigative
sources, one of the contracts that Preval put in place was with
the Steele Foundation to provide presidential security. The Steele
Foundation, headquartered here in the Bay Area, is reportedly
very close to the Pentagon, with its former leader coming directly
from the Pentagon's Office of Intelligence. Interestingly, it
reportedly maintains an office in Miami, the home of the headquarters
of the U.S. Special Operations Command, which was reportedly
involved in training the rebels who ousted Aristide. So, at the
time of Aristide's "capture," he supposedly was protected
by a Pentagon-sanctioned security team that just happened to
fail to secure him.
Additionally, according to this same
source, some of the Dominican troops and Spanish and English-speaking
paramilitaries trained by the U.S. during last year's Operation
Jaded Task in the Dominican Republic were fighting alongside
Haitian rebels in the north and on the southern coast of Haiti.
We are told further that Haitian government authorities intercepted
vans carrying new M-16s across the border from the Dominican
Republic. According to the report I have received, Haitian authorities
began intercepting vans carrying the weapons from the Dominican
Republic beginning last year, and shortly after the U.S. military
delivered 20,000 M-16s to the Dominican Army.
Haiti was about to celebrate its bicentennial.
I remember how happy this country was when it celebrated its
bicentennial. That joy has been denied to the Haitian people.
Jean-Bertrand Aristide's slogan during the country's commemorative
campaign was restitution, reparation, celebration. And he had
declared Haiti an African country.
Aristide was no COINTELPRO leader. No
"clean Negro." And, in the language of J. Edgar Hoover,
he "excited the Negroes." So now, understanding who
Jean Bertrand Aristide really is, and at the same time knowing
how our country deals with authentic leaders like him, we can't
be surprised by what happens. We should, however, be dismayed
if our collective power is not able to restore Aristide to power
once again.
Haiti's lawyer charged that the U.S.
government was directly involved in the coup and that the coup
leaders were armed, trained, employed by the intelligence services
of the United States.
An eye witness, Aristide's caretaker,
told French radio that "the American army came to take him
away at two in the morning. The Americans forced him out with
weapons."
After having spoken directly with President
Aristide, Congresswoman Maxine Waters reported that Aristide
was surrounded by the military. "It's like he's in jail.
He says he was kidnapped," she said.
Randall Robinson also spoke to President
Aristide. Robinson said that Aristide emphatically denied that
he had resigned.
Rev. Jesse Jackson got Aristide on the
phone with an Associated Press reporter, and Aristide himself
said that he was forced to leave. He said, "They came at
night. There were too many. I couldn't count them." He said
that agents told him that if he didn't leave, they would start
shooting and killing. Aristide is quoted as describing these
agents who threatened him as "white Americans, white military."
Donald Rumsfeld said that the idea of
an abduction was just totally inconsistent with everything he
heard or saw. The White House dismissed allegations that Aristide
had been kidnapped by U.S. forces eager to force him to resign
and flee into exile. Colin Powell said flatly that Aristide was
not kidnapped. Powell said, "We did not force him on the
airplane."
Now, I don't know about you. But it is
clear to me by now that I can't believe Donald Rumsfeld. I can't
believe the White House. And I can't believe Colin Powell.
But even more than that, notice Powell's
use of the word "we."
And therein lies the essence of our predicament.
On March 1, 2004, the Washington Times
headlined Colin Powell's comment, "I am on the President's
agenda." Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell have provided
a Black face for policies that have devastated the global community
and our American community. Progressive America and the global
community need a strong, vibrant and activist Black community.
A recent report in the New York Times
found that 50 percent of the Black male adults in New York City
are unemployed. According to the State of the Dream 2004 report,
if current rates of progress remain the same, it will take eight
years for America to close the Black-White gap in high school
graduation. It will take 73 years to close the college graduation
gap, 190 years to close the imprisonment gap, 581 years to close
the per capita income gap, and 1,664 years to close the home
ownership gap. Clearly progress on important quality of life
indices is not being made quickly enough.
But we won't see that portrayed on UPN,
FOX, CNN or the WB. Increasingly, prominent leaders tell us that
we don't need a movement any more and that agitators who concentrate
on these facts are passe.
And to them I only ask one question.
What becomes of a community that rewards those who pick the fruit
up but fails to protect those who shake it down?
Tree shakers are all over the globe trying
to uplift their communities. Only through our active and informed
participation in the political process here will we be able to
stop the powers that produce pernicious policies. Only through
our participation in the political process will we be able to
protect the global community - like Haiti, like Venezuela - from
the vicissitudes of powerful people acting in our name who don't
care one whit about the values that we hold dear.
Black America, vibrant with authentic
leaders, in active partnership with all progressives, can change
what is happening here at home and the policies being implemented
abroad.
And so I end with a plea and a charge
for us as a people to stand up, speak truth to power, don't cower,
and say to those who control this awful machine, "It's time
for you to stop, right now."
Weekend
Edition Features for 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
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