Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
January 29
/ 30, 2005
Gabriel Kolko
Wilsonian
and Neoconservative Myths
Linn Washington, Jr.
Con Job: Bush Pledges on Racism Lack Realism
January 28,
2005
Rachard Itani
Tsunami
Aid By the Numbers: the US Really is a Miser
Jensen / Youngblood
Iraq's
Non-Election
Patrick Cockburn / Elizabeth
Davies
Attacks on Polling Places Leave 13 Dead
Dave Zirin
The Great Donovan McNabb: Proud "Black Quarterback"
Dave Lindorff
Suicide by State Execution?
Karyn Strickler
A Corporate Death Penalty Act?
Jorge Mariscal
Fighting
the Poverty Draft
January 27,
2005
Seymour Hersh
We've
Been Taken Over By a Cult
Cockburn /
Sengupta
The
US's Bloodiest Day in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Juke Box Journalism: Shilling for Bush
Ignacio Chapela
/ John F. García
The Laws of Nature
Mike Whitney
The Widening Chasm Among Conservatives
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Those Liberal Southern Baptists!
Ray McGovern
Reining In Cheney
Russ Wellen
Marginalizing Bin Laden
Christopher
Brauchli
The
FBI's Carnival of Errors
Website of
the Day
Informed Eating
January 26,
2005
Saree Makdisi
An
Iron Wall of Colonization: Fantasies and Realities About the
Prospects for Middle East Peace
Scott Fleming
In Good Conscience: an Interview with Concientious Objector Aidan
Delgado
Dave Lindorff
Filling Saddam's Shoes: the Puppet Regime Return's to Torture
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Salazar and Obama: Two Dismal Debuts
Toni Solo
The
US and Latin America: a Not-So-Magical Reality
William James Martin
Condoleezza Rice: Confused About the Middle East
William A.
Cook
Bush's Second Inaugural Address: the Lost Ur-Version
Eric Hobsbawm
Delusions
About Democracy
Alexander Cockburn
The CIA's New Campus Spies
January 25,
2005
Brian Cloughley
Iraq
as Disneyland
Mike Roselle
Satan is My Co-Pilot
Josh Frank
/ Merlin Chowkwanyun
The War on Civil Liberties
John Chuckman
Freedom on Steroids
Paul Craig
Roberts
A
Party Without Virtue
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
The
Intolerance of Christian Conservatives
James Petras
The
US / Colombia Plot Against Venezuela
Website of the Day
Lowbaggers for the Environment
January 24,
2005
Fred Gardner
Last
Monologue in Burbank
Lori Berenson
On the Politicization of My Case
Uri Avnery
King
George
January 22
/ 23, 2005
Jennifer Van
Bergen / Ray Del Papa
Nuclear
Incident in Montana
Alexander Cockburn
Prince
Harry's Travails
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Company That Runs the Empire: Lockheed and Loaded
Stan Goff
The Spectacle
Saul Landau
Nothing Succeeds Like Failure
Gary Leupp
Official Madness and the Coming War on Iran
Fred Gardner
Is GW Getting the Runaround?
Phil Gasper
Clemency Denied: the Politics of Death in California
Stanley Heller
A Kill-Happy Government: Connecticut Chooses Death
Greg Moses
The Heart of Texas: an Inauguration Day Betrayal on Civil Rights
Justin Taylor
The Folk-Histories of John Ross
Daniel Burton-Rose
One China; Many Problems
Elaine Cassel
Try a Little Tyranny: Questions While Watching the Inaugural
Mike Whitney
Failing Upwards: the Rise of Michael Chertoff
Mark L. Berenson
My Daughter Has Been Wrongly Imprisoned
Christopher
Brauchli
It Doesn't Compute: a $170 Million Mistake
Gilad Atzmon
Zionism and Other Marginal Thoughts
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Day of the Rats
Mark Donham
The Secret Messages of Rahm Emmanuel
Ben Tripp
Adventures in Online Dating
Walter Brasch
Hollywood's Patriots: Soulless Kooks, Mr. Bush?
Poets' Basement
Wuest, Landau, Ford, Albert & Drum
January 21,
2005
Dave Lindorff
A
Great American Journalist:
John L. Hess (1917-2005)
Sharon Smith
The
Anti-War Movement and the Iraqi Resistance
Don Santina
Baseball, Racism and Steroid Hysteria
Ron Jacobs
Locked Out and Pissed Off: Protesting the Bush Inauguration
Kurt Nimmo
The Problem with Mike Ruppert
Don Monkerud
Once They Were Cults: Bush's Faith-Based Social Services
Alan Farago
Swimming Home from the Galapagos
Derek Seidman
An
Interview with Army Medic and Anti-War Activist Patrick Resta
Read How the
Press & the CIA
Killed Gary Webb's Career
January 20,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Dying
for Sycophants
William Cook
The
Bush Inauguration: A Mock Epic Fertility Rite
Joshua Frank
The Democrats and Iran: Look Who's Backing Bush's Next
Eric Ruder
Why Andres Raya Snapped: Another Casualty of Bush's War
Mike Whitney
Coronation in a Garrison State
Robert Jensen
A Citizens Oath of Office
Peter Rost
Bush Report on Drug Imports: Good Data, Bad Conclusions
David Underhill
Is It Torture Yet?: the Eclectic Fool Aid Torture Test
James Reiss
Adieu, Colin Powell: Pea Soup in Foggy Bottom
CounterPunch
Staff
Voices
from Abu Ghraib: the Injured Party
January 19,
2005
Marta Russell
Social
Security Privatization & Disability: 8 Million at Risk
Mike Ferner
Marines
Stretching Movement: Protesting Urban Warfare in Toledo
Nancy Oden
The
Nuremberg Principles, Iraq and Torture
Tony Paterson
A Catalogue of British Abuses in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Divide-and-Conquer Plan to Destroy Social Security
Doug Giebel
BS and CBS: When 60 Minutes Helped Promote WMD Fantasies
Alexander Cockburn
Will
Bush Quit Iraq?
January 18,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
Americans Were Seduced by War: Empire and Militant Christianity
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Federal
Judge: Abu Ghraib Abuses Result of Decision to Ignore Geneva
Conventions
Douglas Lummis
It's a No Brainer; Send Graner: a Rap for Our Time
Ron Jacobs
Syria Back in the Crosshairs?
Seth DeLong
Enter the Dragon: Will Washington Tolerate a Venezuelan-Chinese
Oil Pact?
Lance Selfa
Stolen Election?: Most Democrats Didn't Even Bother to Inquire
Paul D. Johnson
Mystery Meat: a Right-to-Know About Food Origins
Elisa Salasin
An Open Letter to Jenna Bush, Future Teacher
January 17,
2005
Heather Gray
Misconceptions
About King's Methods for Social Change
Robert Fisk
Hotel Room Journalism: the US Press in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
What the NYT Death Chart Omitted: Civilians Slaughtered by US
Military
Jason Leopold
Sam Bodman's Smokestacks: Bush's Choice for Energy Czar is One
of Texas's Worst Polluters
Gary Leupp
A Message from the Iraqi Resistance
Douglas Valentine
An Act of State? the Execution of Martin Luther King
Harvey Arden
Welcome to Leavenworth: My First Encounter with Leonard Peltier
Greg Moses
King
and the Christian Left: Where Lip Service is Not an Option
January 15
/ 16, 2005
James Petras
The
Kidnapping of a Revolutionary
Robert Fisk
Flying Carpet Airlines: My Return to Baghdad
Ron Jacobs
Unfit for Military Service
Brian Cloughley
Smack Daddies of the Hindu Kush: Afghanistan's Drug Bonanza
Fred Gardner
The Allowable-Quantity Expert
Dr. Susan Block
The Counter-Inaugural Ball: Eros Day, 2005
John Ross
Zapatista Literary Llife
Suzan Mazur
Unspooking Frank Carlucci
M. Shahid Alam
America's New Civilizing Mission
Frederick B. Hudson
Jack Johnson's Real Opponent: "That I Was a Man"
Mike Whitney
Bush's Grand Plan: Incite Civil War in Iraq
Tom Crumpacker
A Constitutional Right to Travel to Cuba
Bob Burton
The Other Armstrong Williams Scandal
John Callender
La Conchita and the Indomitable 82-Year Old
Lila Rajiva
Christian Zionism
Saul Landau
An Imperial Portrait: a Visit to Hearst's Castle
Doug Soderstrom
A Touch of Evil: the Morality of Neoconservatism
Poets' Basement
Davies, Louise, Landau, Albert, Collins and Laymon
January 14,
2005
Robert Fisk
"The
Tent of Occupation"
Lee Sustar
Bush's Social Security Con Job
José
M. Tirado
The Christians I Know
Dave Zirin
The Legacy of Jack Johnson
Sheldon Rampton
Calling John Rendon: a True Tale of "Military Intelligence"
Tracy McLellan
Under the Influence
Yves Engler
The Dictatorship of Debt: the World Bank and Haiti
Tom Barry
Robert
Zoellick: a Bush Family Man
Website of
the Day
Ryan for the Nobel Prize?
January 13,
2005
Mark Chmiel
/ Andrew Wimmer
Hearts
and Minds, Revisited
Joe DeRaymond
The Salvador Option: Terror,
Elections and Democracy
Greg Moses
Every Hero a Killer?...Not
Dave Lindorff
The Great WMD Fraud: Time for an Accounting
Jorge Mariscal
Dr. Galarza v. Alberto Gonzales: Which Way for Latinos?
Christopher Brauchli
Gonzales and the Death Penalty: the Executioner Never Sleeps
Gary Leupp
"Fighting
for the Work of the Lord": Christian Fascism in America
January 12,
2005
Robert Fisk
Fear
Stalks Baghdad
Josh Frank
The
Farce of the DNC Contest
Jack Random
Casualties
of War: the Untold Stories
John Roosa
Aceh's Dual Disasters: the Tsunami and Military Rule
Carol Norris
In the Wake of the Tsunami
Mike Whitney
Pink Slips at CBS
Alan Farago
Can
the Everglades be Saved?
Paul Craig
Roberts
What's
Our Biggest Problem in Iraq...the Insurgency or Bush?
January 11,
2005
Tom Barry
The
US isn't "Stingy"; It's Strategic: Aid as a Weapon
of Foreign Policy
James Hodge
and Linda Cooper
Voice
of the Voiceless: Father Roy Bourgeois and the School of the
the Americas
Linda S. Heard
Farah Radio Break Down: Joseph Farah's Messages of Hate and Homophobia
Derrick O'Keefe
Electoral Gigolo?: Richard Gere and the Occupied Vote
Gila Svirsky
A Tale of Two Elections
Harry Browne
Irish
"Peace Process", RIP
January 10,
2005
Ramzy Baroud
Faith-Based
Disasters: Tsunami Aid and War Costs
Talli Nauman
Killing
Journalists: Mexico's War on a Free Press
Uri Avnery
Sharon's Monologue
Dave Lindorff
Tucker
Carlson's Idiot Wind
Dave Zirin
Randy
Moss's Moondance
Dave Silver
Left Illusions About the Democratic Party
Charles Demers
Plan Salvador for Iraq: Death Squads Come in Waves
William A.
Cook
Causes
and Consequences: Bush, Osama and Israel
January 8 /
9, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Say,
Waiter, Where's the Blood in My Margarita Glass?
John H. Summers
Chomsky
and Academic History
Greg Moses
Getting Real About the Draft
Walter A. Davis
Bible Says: the Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism
Victor Kattan
The EU and Middle East Peace
John Bolender
The Plight of Iraq's Mandeans
Robert Fisk
The Politics of Lebanon
Fred Gardner
Situation NORML
Joe Bageant
The Politics of the Comfort Zone
Mickey Z.
I Want My DDT: Little Nicky Kristof Bugs Out
Ben Tripp
CounterClockwise Evolution
Ron Jacobs
Elvis and His Truck: Out on Highway 61
Saul Landau
Sex
and the Country
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Time to End the Blackout
Ellen Cantarow
NPR's Distortions on Palestine
Richard Oxman
Bageantry Continued
Poets' Basement
Gaffney, Landau, Albert, Collins
January 7,
2005
Omar Barghouti
Slave
Sovereignty: Elections Under Occupation
Kent Paterson
The Framing of Felipe Arreaga: Another Mexican Environmentalist
Arrested
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Old
Vijay Merchant and the Tsunami
David Krieger
Cancel the Inauguration Parties
Gideon Levy
New Year, Old Story
Dave Lindorff
Ohio Protest: First Shot Fired by Congressional Progressives
Christopher
Brauchli
Privatizing the IRS
Roger Burbach
/ Paul Cantor
Bush,
the Pentagon and the Tsunami
January 6,
2005
Brian J. Foley
Gonzales:
Supporting Torture is not His Greatest Sin
Greg Moses
Boot
Up America!: Gen. Helmly's Memo Leaks New Bush Deal
Petras / Chomsky
An
Open Letter to Hugo Chavez
Alan Maass
The Decline of the Dollar
Dave Lindorff
Colin Powell's Selective Sense of Horror
Jenna Orkin
The EPA and a Dirty Bomb: 9/11's Disastrous Precedent
P. Sainath
The
Tsunami and India's Coastal Poor
January 5,
2005
Alan Farago
2004:
An Environmental Retrospective
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Oversight
Detected?: Sen. McCain and the Boeing Tanker Scam
Jean-Guy Allard
Gary Webb: a Cuban Perspective
Fred Gardner
Strutting, Smirking, As If The Mad Plan Was Working
David Swanson
Albert Parsons on the Gallows
Richard Oxman
The Joe Bageant Interview
Bruce Jackson
Death
on the Living Room Floor
January 4,
2005
Michael Ortiz
Hill
Mainlining
Apocalypse
Elaine Cassel
They
Say They Can Lock You Up for Life Without a Trial
Yoram Gat
The
Year in Torture
Martin Khor
Tragic
Tales and Urgent Tasks from the Tsunami Disaster
Gary Leupp
Death
and Life in the Andaman Islands
January 3,
2005
Ron Jacobs
The
War Hits Home
Dave Lindorff
Is
There a Single Senator Who Will Stand Up for Black Voters?
Mike Whitney
The Guantanamo Gulag
Joshua Frank
Greens and Republicans: Strange Bedfellows
Maria Tomchick
Playing Politics with Disaster Aid
Rhoda and Mark
Berenson
Our Daughter Lori: Another Year of Grave Injustice
David Swanson
The Media and the Ohio Recount
Kathleen Christison
Patronizing
the Palestinians
January 1 /
2, 2005
Gary Leupp
Earthquakes
and End Times, Past and Present
Rev. William
E. Alberts
On "Moral Values": Code Words for Emerging Authoritarian
Tendencies
M. Shahid Alam
Testing Free Speech in America
Stan Goff
A Period for Pedagogy
Brian Cloughley
Bush and the Tsunami: the Petty and the Petulant
Sylvia Tiwon
/ Ben Terrall
The Aftermath in Aceh
Ben Tripp
Requiem for 2004
Greg Moses
A Visible Future?
Steven Sherman
The 2004 Said Awards: Books Against Empire
Sean Donahue
The Erotics of Nonviolence
James T. Phillips
The Beast's Belly
David Krieger
When Will We Ever Learn
Poets' Basement
Soderstrom, Hamod, Louise and Albert
December 23,
2004
Chad Nagle
Report
from Kiev: Yushchenko's Not Quite Ready for Sainthood
David Smith-Ferri
The
Real UN Disgrace in Iraq
Bill Quigley
Death
Watch for Human Rights in Haiti
Mickey Z.
Crumbs
from Our Table
Christopher Brauchli
Merck's Merry X-mas
Greg Moses
When
No Law Means No Law
Alan Singer
An
Encounter with Sen. Schumer: a Very Dangerous Democrat
David Price
Social
Security Pump and Dump
Website of the Day
Gabbo Gets Laid
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
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
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Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
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Corrie
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Erosion of the American Dream
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Impeach
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|
Weekend Edition
January 29 / 30, 2005
The Case of Haiti
How
Bush Brings Freedom to the World
By
TOM REEVES
Now that President George W. Bush has
outlined his plans to "bring freedom to the world,"
it would seem urgent that the world look closely at what Bush
calls his successful mission to bring freedom to Haiti in 2004.
Yet with Iraq dominating the news, most media ignore Haiti.
When there is coverage, as when U.S. Secretary of State Colin
Powell visited in December to celebrate the U.S. and U.N. "success,"
it is brief and distorted. Recent international documentation
of extreme human rights abuses by the U.S.-backed de-facto Haitian
government should wake up the media.
Liberals--and liberal media--are
spot-lighting and decrying what they rightly identify as a campaign
of pre-emptive and unilateral intervention world-wide to eliminate
all regimes deemed hostile to U.S. interests and influence.
They correctly point out that Bush will not challenge the extremely
oppressive regimes--like Egypt and Saudi Arabia or Israel and
China--that are its political allies and/or economic partners.
They are quick to show that U.S. campaigns to "liberate"
Afghanistan and Iraq have brought more violence and oppression
than they claim to have dispelled. Why, then, have liberals
either wholly ignored the case of Haiti--or, worse, praised the
U.S. for its role there last year?
Last February 29, U.S. diplomats--backed
by marines--forcibly escorted Haiti's first democratically-elected
President, Jean Bertrand Aristide, to a waiting U.S. military
plane. Without telling him where they were headed, they dumped
him unceremoniously in the Central African Republic--a country
the State Department itself called one of the most violent and
corrupt in the world. At the time, extreme right-wing former
military and para-military "rebels," who themselves
admit massive funding from U.S. sources, had seized Gonaives,
Cap Haitien and several other Haitian cities--committing now
documented rapes, murders and other atrocities.
A coalition of elite Haitian
business interests and university "student groups"
--put together by U.S. AID "democracy enhancement"
teams, was demanding Aristide's ouster for alleged corruption
and human rights violations. The most they could point to were
three unsolved murders of journalists and several cases of obvious
political arrests. Wholly ignored were on-going attacks on activists
within Aristide's Lavalas party, as well as ambushes and assassinations
of judges and other government officials. The "opposition"
coalition, self-named "the 184," claimed that elections
for President and the Haitian parliament in 2000 were deeply
flawed. In fact, only a few Senatorial elections were clouded
by controversy, and the OAS and even the U.S. accepted as valid
the Presidential election in which Aristide received more than
90% of the vote in a 60% turnout.*
With U.S., Canadian and French
troops already on the ground, the United Nations was obliged
after the fact to endorse what amounted to a coup d'etat and
invasion. A de-facto government was quickly installed, which
consisted almost entirely of U.N. and other international agency
employees living in exile, and dedicated to neo-liberal programs
of structural adjustment recognized by most progressives as devastating
to programs of social justice in poor countries around the world.
Gerard Latortue was chosen as interim Prime Minister. Latortue
had lived for more than a decade in a luxurious villa in Boca
Raton, Florida. Latortue called the right-wing rebels "freedom
fighters." These included some convicted of mass murder
and other human rights violations from the previous coup against
Aristide in 1991, when at least 5,000 Lavalas supporters had
been killed.
The U.S. backed coup was applauded
by some progressive elements in Haiti, and many of the non-governmental
organizations in the U.S. that backed them. They criticized
Aristide for not fulfilling his own populist programs of land
reform and poverty alleviation. They were particularly critical
of "free trade zones," accepted by Aristide, that were
pushed by the U.S. and the World Bank, and would forcibly remove
peasants in areas along the Dominican border, to work in Dominican-owned
sweat shops. These "radical" groups did not seem bothered
by the odd coincidence that the opposition to Aristide was led
by owners of the worst Haitian sweat shops. Some, like Chavannes
Jean-Baptiste, of the MPP--the largest peasant group in Haiti--gave
support to some of the former military who had once driven his
family out of the Central Plateau and destroyed MPP headquarters
there. Jean-Baptiste went so far as to accept a position in
the new government. Grassroots International, based in Boston,
which funds MPP, continued to take the position that Aristide's
removal was justified.
Yet Haiti is in far worse condition today than before the coup
last February. Arguably, it is in worse shape than during the
previous coup or under the Duvaliers. Poverty--already the worst
in the hemisphere--has deepened. Now even the U.S. military,
in a report last November for it's Southern Command, called the
current government a "failed regime." A plan hatched
by Canadian and other officials in a secret Quebec meeting in
early 2003 for a U.N. "Trusteeship" of Haiti as a "failed
state" is seen even by some "progressives" as
an alternative to the current mayhem.
Now a new human rights report
from the Center for the Study of Human Rights (CSHR) at the University
of Miami (Florida) has documented some of the worst abuses committed
directly by the Haitian National Police (HNP), and in some cases
by the UN forces (MINUSTAH) accompanying them. The noted Philadelphia
attorney, Thomas Griffin, and other investigators include horrendous
photos they took of boys as young as twelve, lying unattended
in pools of their own blood in the General Hospital, where doctors
refused to treat them. Other photos show bodies left in the
street and dozens of bodies rotting and piled high at the morgue
after police and UN invasions of Port au Prince slums targeted
as Aristide strongholds. Interviews with police and others make
it clear that there has been a systematic campaign of political
repression and assassination aimed at Aristide's Lavalas Party.
The report ties the abuse directly to "sensitization"
of many sectors of Haitian society--human rights groups, judges,
students and police alike--by U.S. non governmental organizations
like IFES (International Foundation for Electoral Systems) with
support from USAID. (See www.ijdg.org/cshrhaitireport.pdf).
Extensive interviews with staff
of CARLI, a Haitian human rights organization, revealed that
IFES funded CARLI during the lead-up to the ouster of Aristide--
with technical support and as much as $54,000 during 2003. CARLI
staff revealed that it was instructed to provide lists of alleged
Lalavals human rights violators, which were then read out on
Haitian commercial radio. (Twenty of the twenty-five commercial
stations and several of the Haitian daily and weekly newspapers
are owned by members of the "184" anti-Aristide coalition.)
It is now feared that these lists have been used since the
coup to target Lavalas leaders for summary arrest, attacks on
property, and even death. With IFES funding slowly removed during
2004, CARLI began to report on fraudulent human rights cases
put forward by the government, and on violent campaigns against
Lavalas and other community groups who refused to endorse the
removal of Aristide. It investigated the claim of Latortue
that Lavalas had ordered decapitation of police officers in a
campaign dubbed "Operation Baghdad." These accusations
were picked up and spread uncritically by Haitian and U.S. media.
CARLI now says no such campaign by Lavalas existed, and that
the only two decapitations of police were committed by former
Haitian army officers, not Lavalas. Such disinformation played
a major role during the previous coup as well as during the campaign
to vilify Aristide.
On January 14, eyewitnesses
say Haitian police murdered Abdias Jean, journalist for Miami
radio station WKAT, after he witnessed police execution of two
or more young boys in such a police operation in the Port au
Prince neighborhood, Village de Dieu. IAPA (Inter-American
Press Association) has condemned the murder and demanded an immediate
investigation. It is particularly ironic that among those strongly
condemning this murder, as well as the lack of coverage in the
commercial Haitian media, is Joseph Guy Delva, President of the
Haitian Journalists Association. Delva was a leader among journalists
who condemned Aristide. The CSHR investigators report that
Delva told them "if a journalist was arrested during Aristide's
government, there would be a public outcry from print and radio
journalists. 'Now,' said Delva, "when a journalist is arrested,
the newspapers and radio stations applaud.'" De-facto
Prime Minister Latortue contacted the Reuters news-service to
complain about an article written by Delva concerning the murder
of Jean. The Haiti Support Group in Britain, critical both of
the Aristide government and the U.S. intervention, has protested
Latortue's intervention as a threat to Delva as well as freedom
of the press.
The human rights investigators
quoted a Quebec police officer who is a commander of the UN unit,
CIVPOL. He told them he was "in shock" with the conditions
he faces in attempting to train the Haitian National police,
"Our mandate is to coach, to train and to provide information,
but all we've done is engage in daily guerrilla warfare....Where
are the newspaper reporters?" he asked.
The CSHR reports credible evidence
that raids began on Port au Prince's poorest neighborhoods immediately
after the landing of U.S. troops, and that these sped up after
major pro-Aristide demonstrations in September illustrated continuing
wide support for his return. The human rights investigators
themselves witnessed events immediately before and after one
such raid on Nov. 18 in the neighborhood of Bel Air, near the
Presidential palace. They photographed and interviewed Haitian
National Police and MINUSTAH as they entered the neighborhood
They photographed bodies of those killed--including women and
teenagers--during the operation, and interviewed some of the
severely wounded--including at least one who identified the MINUSTAH
(UN) soldiers who shot him. Police and residents alike told
them such raids had taken place almost daily since September--with
deaths and injuries. One police officer said that they were
pushed to target specific individuals for assassination, but
that for every ten killed, six were merely witnesses or bystanders.
Residents were afraid to take the wounded to the General Hospital,
where doctors often refused to treat patients without money (the
former staff of Cuban volunteer doctors was expelled after the
coup), and where the HNP often came to seize such victims who
subsequently disappeared.
The CSHR report now documents
beyond doubt what other human rights delegations and the Lavalas
activists have been claiming all year: the puppet regime installed
by the "international community" (the U.S., France
and Canada) has committed far more human rights abuses than even
the worst claims against Aristide's government. In a New Year's
message from South African exile, Aristide claimed 10,000 have
been killed and 1,000 of his supporters illegally detained since
his "modern-style kidnapping" last February. Mainstream
media have documented some 200 murders of Aristide supporters
since September, and there were as many as 700 political prisoners
by late last fall.
In November, Amnesty International
issued an appeal to the Haitian government and to MINUSTAH to
investigate police massacres in pro-Lavalas neighborhoods, as
well as detentions for long periods without charges. Among those
detained were world-renowned human rights leaders like Father
Gerard Jean-Juste, violently snatched by masked men while distributing
food to poor children in his Port au Prince parish, as well as
the former Prime Minister, the President of the Haitian Senate
and the former President of the House of Deputies. After a world-wide
outcry, Father Jean-Juste and the parliamentary leaders were
released--but many, including journalists and activists--as well
as Prime Minister Yvon Neptune--remain behind bars, most without
having even seen a judge.
Then on December 1, as U.S.
Secretary of State Colin Powell touted U.S. policy at the Haitian
Presidential palace, a riot broke out in the penitentiary several
blocks away. Gunfire could be heard by Powell and reporters
accompanying him. The mainstream media reported that Aristide
supporters did the shooting. Yet the anti-Aristide human rights
group, NCHR (National Council on Haitian Rights) documented that
Haitian National Police had killed seven and shot or beaten nearly
fifty prisoners, three of whom died from wounds. Journalist
Reed Lindsay, in the January 2 San Francisco Chronicle, reported
interviews he held inside the penitentiary in December. Prisoners
claimed between thirty and 110 prisoners were slain in the massacre,
and scores injured.
The Institute for Justice &
Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) issued a detailed report on the massacre,
documenting incredibly dire prison conditions, and the likelihood
that many, many prisoners were killed. The IJDH report emphasizes
that "for most of the dead, their assassination was the
last in a long string of human rights violations. Only one in
fifty is likely to have actually been convicted of committing
a crime. The vast majority were likely arrested illegally without
a warrant and detained on vague charges with no evidence in their
file and no chance of judicial review of the detention."
Meanwhile, former Haitian military
who led the violent revolt against Aristide last January continue
to control several small cities. They include convicted murderers
and human rights offenders who broke out of prison during the
coup. Their commander, Remissainthes Revix, holds press conferences
in the up-scale neighborhood of Petionville. He refuses to disarm
and calls for violent opposition to U.N.-led disarmament. After
a recent take-over of Aristide's former residence by Revix and
other former soldiers, the Haitian government arranged payments
of nearly $5000 to each former officer, beginning with those
who participated in the take-over, and eventually to include
some 6000 former soldiers. This is an astounding potential sum
of $30 million for a cash-strapped government. The money is
ostensibly compensation for Aristide's "un-Constitutional"
disbanding of the army during his first term--a move highly popular
in Haiti and praised internationally by human rights and peace
organizations.
At the same time, the Latortue
government has not re-opened many schools for the January session
(some for lack of cash, some for political reasons), and has
failed to pay doctors and other professionals at hospitals and
clinics. More than sixty doctors and
other health workers at the largest hospital in Port au Prince
have gone on strike.
The role of Brazil, which heads
MINUSTAH, remains ambiguous. Brazil's President Lula was long
known for opposition to U.S. hegemony in Latin America, and his
social program is similar to that of Lavalas. Yet the Brazil-dominated
force has accompanied the Haitian National Police in several
attacks on Lavalas neighborhoods, at least present during killings,
if not participating. Brazil has long complained that the promised
international aid has not materialized (less than $100 million
of the 1.2 billion pledged as of December), and that the international
force is under-manned. Only in December, however, did a rift
between Brazil and the U.S. come into the open. Brazilian commander,
General Augusto Heleno Ribeiro, insisted, "We are not an
occupying force...yet we are under extreme pressure (from the
U.S., France and Canada) to use violence."
As Haiti slips further and
further into chaos, as violence and human rights abuses escalate,
and as the de-facto government fails to function in more and
more areas, groups like the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA),
which have criticized U.S. policies and the Latortue government,
urge that Brazil be given a new mandate: to lead a 10-year United
Nations protectorate--the very scheme proposed in Quebec two
years ago.
On the other hand, U.S. officials
like the ultra-right-wing Roger Noriega (Assistant Secretary
of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs), continue to express
support for Latortue. "Haiti is on the right track,"
he insisted recently. The U.S. announced jointly with Canada,
France and the Haitian government, that $41 million will be given
to support Haitian elections next fall. "The elections will
go forward," Noriega insists--a refrain heard nowadays in
that other U.S. protectorate, Iraq. Charles Arthur, of the U.K.-based
Haiti Support Group, says the timing of this announcement of
elections while serious human rights abuse charges have not been
addressed is suspicious.
Brian Concannon, of the IJDH,
an American attorney who successfully prosecuted human rights
abusers from the previous coup, does not agree that the options
are either the current mess or a U.N. protectorate. "The
great majority of Haitian people prefer democracy. In any truly
democratic elections, most observers believe, including recently
the Canadian Ambassador, the Lavalas party would win again."
It was recently announced in
South Africa that two former Nobel Peace
Prize winners from the African National Congress and Inkatha
movements will travel to Haiti to work toward a resolution to
the crisis that would include Aristide's Lavalas party. South
Africa continues to treat Aristide as the legitimate President
of Haiti, and to demand that he be allowed to complete his term
of office. CARICOM (the organization of Caribbean nations) and
many African nations continue to refuse to recognize the Latortue
government--despite extreme U.S. pressure--and to demand investigations
of the original removal of Aristide as well as on-going human
rights violations. These would seem to be the only glimmers
of hope on the bleak Haitian political landscape.
The question remains: why
have NPR and the CBC and most other liberal or even most "progressive"
media not covered any of this? How can Canadian Prime Minister
Paul Martin get away with claiming Haiti as a major success of
Canadian foreign policy--with no outcry in either Parliament
or the Canadian press? Where are the American non-governmental
organizations that funded grassroots groups in Haiti now? Recently,
I forwarded information from the CSHR report to U.S. Haiti solidarity
leaders who were strong critics of Aristide and who gave reluctant
support to the U.S. intervention last year. One wrote me, "We
were wrong about our hopes for the U.S. installed government.
We have no confidence now at all" in the Haitian police
and interim government. Yet this activist added that he was
depressed about Haiti, with no idea about what to do. Unless
we are to give up altogether and let Bush have a free-hand in
building up the American empire and installing it's repressive,
violent version of "freedom" world-wide, there is something
very urgent that we must all do: expose the U.S. game everywhere
for what it is: blatant tyranny. Nowhere is that plainer than
in Haiti.
Tom Reeves is a retired Caribbean studies professor
from Boston.
To keep up with Haiti, visit
these web sites: www.ijdh.org;
www.haitisupport.gn.apc.org;
www.haitiaction.net;
www.coha.org.
*See articles in 2003-4 by
Kevin Pina in the Black Commentator, by Anthony Fenton in Z and
elsewhere, and my own articles in Z, CounterPunch, Dollars &
Sense, the NACLA Report, Interconnect, the Montréal Gazette
and Rabble.Ca., and go to coverage by Amy Goodman on Democracy
Now Radio; or Flashpoints (Pacifica Radio).
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