For the Record: Quebec Media on Haiti since the Earthquake. By Darren Ell

Via: Haiti Analysis.

In the five weeks following the January 12th earthquake in Haiti, Quebec’s mainstream French media focused a considerable amount of attention on the devastated nation. What follows is a critical look at the opinions expressed by columnists during this time. Their ideas on three themes are examined: (1) The Reconstruction Process; (2) Haiti’s poverty and (3) Attitudes towards former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his party, Fanmi Lavalas.

Looking Ahead: the Reconstruction Process

When opinion writers look to the future, Haiti is depicted as a clean slate, a country bereft of capable people. Hope for the future and leadership in the reconstruction process are to be found not within the Haitian majority population but in the diaspora, the Haitian business elite and the international community. Journalists’ ideas and the ideas of the people they quote or interview are distinctly colonial and there is virtually no diversity of opinion. Haitian sovereignty and the building of a strong Haitian state are seen as unimportant, and the extraordinary ability of the Haitian population to mobilize and create progressive political programs is overlooked. A new Haiti is to be imposed, it would appear, by the few on the many.

Vincent Marissal is a columnist for La Presse in Montreal and a prominent figure on the Quebec media landscape. One month after the earthquake, he called for the international community to “impose the required decisions.”

Responding to an urgent plea by the World Bank to strengthen the Government of Haiti, Marissal said

“How do we say cut the crap in Créole? … The word is strongly displeasing to Haitians, and this is understandable, but the solution starts with trusteeship, or protectorate if this word is less troubling to sensitive types.”

More concretely, Marissal suggests ignoring democratic procedures and imposing an elite government:

“… we must install, for the next five years, an emergency government composed of several respected Haitian personalities, including members of the diaspora and representatives of the international community, whose mandate would be to restore order and security, save and give security to the victims, establish and supervise the reconstruction plan and follow the money carefully.”

Marissal suggests that “respected industrialist” Charles Henry Baker could be one of the “respected personalities” on the new political scene. Marissal’s colleague at La Presse, Philippe Mercure, later ran a puff piece on Baker entitled “The big-hearted entrepreneur.” Mercure did not mention that “big-hearted” Baker is a a key member of the reviled Haitian business elite whose millions dodge government coffers, that in 2009 he opposed paying his sweatshop employees more than 2$ US per day, that his pro-coup d’état organization, the Group of 184, promoted armed UN attacks on heavily populated slums following the 2004 coup d’état, and that he was supported by 8.2% of the Haitian population in the 2006 Presidential election.

Israeli Unaccountability and Denial: Suppressing the Practice of Torture. By Stephen Lendman

Via: SteveLendmanBlog.

The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PACTI – stoptorture.org) “believes that torture and ill-treatment of any kind and under all circumstances is incompatible with the moral values of democracy and the rule of law.” Yet it’s systematically practiced by the Israeli Police, General Security Service (GSS), Israeli Prison Service (IPS), and Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

In December 2009, PACTI published its latest report titled, “Accountability Denied: The Absence of Investigation and Punishment of Torture in Israel,” explaining “the many layers of immunity that protect” the guilty, specifically the GSS, the focus of this report.

Immunity insures that GSS interrogation torture and abuse complaints never become criminal investigations, indictments, or legal hearings. Israel’s State Attorney and Attorney General assure it “under a systemic legal cloak” giving torturers “unrestricted protection.”

Since 2001, victims submitted over 600 torture complaints to authorities. None were investigated – “the first step” before indictments, prosecutions, and convictions. As a result, GSS interrogators have blanket immunity to operate freely “behind closed doors (making) torture an institutionalized method of interrogation in Israel, enjoying the full backing of the legal system.” As in America, torture is official Israeli policy.

Britain May Provoke New Conflict With Argentina. By Rick Rozoff

Via: Stop NATO.

On February 22 two major developments occurred in the Americas south of the Rio Grande. The two-day Rio Group summit opened in Mexico and Great Britain started drilling for oil 60 miles north of the Falklands Islands, known as Las Malvinas to Argentina.

The meeting in Mexico was identified as a Unity Summit because for the first time the 24 members of the Rio Group (minus Honduras, not invited because of the illegitimacy of its post-coup regime) – Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela – were joined by the fifteen members of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM): Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Montserrat, Saint Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago. (Haiti, Jamaica and Suriname are members of both organizations.)

Ahead of the summit the Financial Times wrote, “The Mexican-led initiative, a clear sign of Latin America’s growing confidence as a region, will exclude both the US and Canada. Some observers believe it could even eventually rival the 35-member Organisation of American States (OAS), which includes the US and Canada and has been the principal forum for hemispheric issues during the past half century.” [1]

In fact on the first day of the summit Bolivian President Evo Morales called for a “a new US-free OAS,” [2] stressing Washington’s centuries-long history of perpetrating military coups, blackmail, looting of natural resources and, over the past generation, the scourge of neo-liberalism in the Americas.

In 1986 the Rio Group grew out of the four-member Contradora Group consisting of Colombia, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela which was formed in response to Washington’s Contra and death squad campaigns in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1980s. Part of the legacy Bolivia’s Morales was referring to.

Coinciding to the day if not the hour of the beginning of the summit, the British Desire Petroleum company began exploring for oil and gas off the Falklands/Las Malvinas, seized from Argentina by Britain in 1833 and fought over by the nations in a 74-day war in 1982. “Neighbouring Argentina, which lays claim to the islands, is fiercely opposed to the drilling. Earlier this month, the Argentinian government filed a formal protest with the British government.” [3]

Britain lost 255 soldiers in the conflict, the highest wartime fatalities it had suffered since the Korean War and the Malayan conflict. The British death toll in Afghanistan recently surpassed that number.

London’s energy grab in the South Atlantic did not go unnoticed in Mexico, where 26 presidents and prime ministers were among the participants at the Unity Summit. Argentine President Cristina Fernandez denounced the British actions as “unilateral and illegal” [4] and a breach of her nation’s sovereignty.

For a socialist movement to defend education!

Via: WSWS.

Statement of the International Students for Social Equality

On March 4, students and workers throughout California and the US will demonstrate against the attack on public education and increases in tuition that are making a college education unaffordable for the majority of working class youth.

The ISSE encourages all youth and working people to take part in these events. It is high time for a fight back against the unrelenting attack on jobs, living conditions, and social services!

However, demonstrations by themselves will not solve this crisis. What is necessary, above all, is a new political movement that unifies all sections of the working class in a common political struggle, directed at the source of the crisis: the capitalist system and the two political parties—the Democrats and Republicans—that defend it.

Having emptied the federal treasury through the bank bailout and the funding of two criminal wars, the big business politicians claim there is no money for education or any other basic services. They insist that only the affluent should get a decent education, while the vast majority of young people are consigned to poverty-stricken schools and a future of low-paying jobs or joining the military.

The right to education—including low-cost and even free higher education for working class, minority and immigrant youth—was won through mass social struggles. Today, every politician, from Schwarzenegger to Pelosi and Obama, insists that universal access to quality education—along with health care, jobs and a home—is a wild extravagance that working people must learn to live without.

This is unacceptable. The working class is not responsible for the crisis of American capitalism or the economic meltdown produced by the recklessness and avarice of the Wall Street speculators. We must not pay for it.

Rachel Corrie’s family bring civil suit over human shield’s death in Gaza. By Rory McCarthy

Via: The Guardian.
The family of the American activist Rachel Corrie, who was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza seven years ago, is to bring a civil suit over her death against the Israeli defence ministry.
The case, which begins on 10 March in Haifa, northern Israel, is seen by her parents as an opportunity to put on public record the events that led to their daughter’s death in March 2003. Four key witnesses – three Britons and an American – who were at the scene in Rafah when Corrie was killed will give evidence, according the family lawyer, Hussein Abu Hussein.

The four were all with the International Solidarity Movement, the activist group to which Corrie belonged. They have since been denied entry to Israel, and the group’s offices in Ramallah have been raided several times in recent weeks by the Israeli military.

Now, under apparent US pressure, the Israeli government has agreed to allow them entry so they can testify. Corrie’s parents, Cindy and Craig, will also fly to Israel for the hearing.

A Palestinian doctor from Gaza, Ahmed Abu Nakira, who treated Corrie after she was injured and later confirmed her death, has not been given permission by the Israeli authorities to leave Gaza to attend.

Why Iran? By Emir Sader

Via: Monthly Review.

Iran continues to be the privileged member of the “Axis of Evil,” a notion formally but not really abandoned by the United States.  It is accompanied by Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador, in addition to North Korea, among others.

Why Iran?  The criteria mentioned by Hillary Clinton make no sense.  Risk of possessing conditions to manufacture nuclear weapons?  Israel openly admits that it has nuclear weapons and threatens weekly to bomb precisely Iran.

Risk of becoming a dictatorship?  What are countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt except dictatorships?

Risk of Iran posing a threat to its neighbors?  Iran has never invaded other countries, nor has it occupied any foreign territories.  In contrast, Israel has occupied Palestinian territories for more than four decades and certainly has nuclear weapons.

Iran is a religious state, an Islamic one, which favors the Shiites.  But Israel is a Jewish state, without a Constitution, which favors the Jews and makes the Palestinians, a quarter of its population, second-class citizens.

Why the double standard?  Simply because Israel is the privileged ally of the United States in the Middle East — the country that receives the most US aid in the world — whereas Iran is in opposition to the United States.  Plain and simple.  To confirm that, ask yourself: why doesn’t Hillary criticize the dictatorship that exists in Saudi Arabia or Egypt, the latter of which is the second largest recipient of US military aid?  Because they are faithful allies of the United States.

What does the treaty on nuclear weapons really mean?  It’s not a treaty for denuclearization but one for non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.  That is to say, those who have nuclear weapons seek to prevent others from getting them.  Soon after China manufactured nuclear weapons, though, it broke the door open, and the country was admitted into the Security Council.  It’s clear that Pakistan, India, and Israel possess nuclear weapons.  The United States, however, not only has a completely different attitude to Israel; it also aids these countries militarily — even in nuclear terms.

The struggle has to be for denuclearization.  Why does a country need to have nuclear weapons?  For what purpose?

The Non-Proliferation Treaty aims to protect the nuclear power of the great powers, those who are moreover engaged in wars and production of weapons.  Denuclearization, on the contrary, is a struggle to abolish nuclear weapons — beginning with those who hold the largest stockpiles of them in the world.

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The original article “Por que o Irã?” was published in the Blog do Emir section of Agência Carta Maior on 17 February 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi.

Marjah Madness. By Jeff Huber

Via: AntiWar.

As journalist Gareth Porter said in a recent interview with Real News, Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s offensive in Marjah, Afghanistan, is “more of an effort to shape public opinion in the United States than to shape the politics of the future of Afghanistan.” Like so much of what we’ve seen in our woeful war on terrorism, the Marjah effort is short on substance and long on Newspeak, Doublethink, and other Orwellian deceptions.

The Washington Post, the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and an unhealthy chunk of the rest of the news outlets are calling the Marjah madness a “test” of “Obama’s strategy” in Afghanistan. Amazingly, nobody is calling it a test of McChrystal’s strategy. Stan the Man is, after all, the maestro who orchestrated the big honking counterinsurgency (COIN) plan with its attendant troop escalation and who then, along with Gen. David Petraeus and the rest of the warmongery, boxed Obama into going along with the scheme through an expansive media campaign that included McChrystal’s September 2009 infomercial on 60 Minutes.

We don’t need to feel sorry for Obama, though. He asked for this during the 2008 presidential race when he decided to show the hawks his baby-makers by saying he’d pull us out of Iraq but he’d “get the job” done in Afghanistan. Pavlov’s dogs of war started frothing when he stepped on that land mine. Obama had a chance to get rid of the war dons – Petraeus, McChrystal, Joint Chiefs chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, and the Pentagon’s bureaucratic survival savant, Robert Gates – when he took office. But no, President Obama kept them around, despite the fact that they all had publicly criticized Candidate Obama’s plan to establish an Iraq withdrawal timeline. Obama exacerbated things when he named retired Army Gen. James Jones as national security adviser; Jones had stated for the record in 2007 that an Iraq withdrawal deadline would be “against our national interest.”

So, yes, Marjah is a referendum on Obama’s fitness as commander in chief, and it’s becoming clear that the guy is in over his pay grade.

‘Mercenary trade association’ to meet in Miami on post-quake Haiti opportunities. By Sue Sturgis

Via: Facing South.

An industry group representing private security firms will meet in Miami next month to discuss business opportunities for its members in post-earthquake Haiti, deepening concerns among some observers about the growing privatization of disaster assistance.

The International Peace Operations Association — labeled the “mercenary trade association” by journalist and Blackwater/Xe watchdog Jeremy Scahill — is co-sponsoring the March 9 and 10 gathering with Global Investment Summits, a London-based company that describes itself as “a provider of business summits that transcend the boundaries of the traditional conference model” with a focus on “the promotion of trade and investment within countries that are vast in economic potential.”

All profits for the event — titled “Haiti: Resources for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance” — will go to benefit the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund. Former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have been invited to take part in the conference, along with representatives of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and nongovernmental organizations including the American Red Cross and Save the Children.

The IPOA was founded in April 2001 to support the growing private military industry. Blackwater — the troubled North Carolina-based private military firm now known as Xe — was a member of the group until 2007, leaving after the association launched an investigation into a massacre of unarmed civilians in Iraq by Blackwater guards. Current member companies include DynCorp International and Triple Canopy, both based in Virginia.

The Murder of Iraq: It Never Happened. By Paul Street

Via: ZCommunications.

“We Do Not Subjugate Others”

The doctrinal assumption that “we” (the United States) are inherently benevolent, noble, well-intentioned, helpful, and democratic in our foreign policies is ubiquitous in U.S. dominant media and indeed across the spectrum of respectable opinion in “mainstream” American political and intellectual culture.

“The United States is good,” Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeline Albright explained in 1999. “We try to do our best everywhere.”

Three years before, Clinton explained that the U.S. was “the world’s greatest force for peace and freedom, for democracy and security and prosperity.”[1]

“More than any other nation,” Barack Obama said at West Point last December 1st, “the United States of America has underwritten global security for over six decades. Unlike the great powers of old, we have not sought world domination. We do not seek to occupy other nations. We are still heirs to a moral struggle for freedom.”[2]

“We do not use our power to subjugate others,” Obama added in a nationally narcissistic Newsweek essay (deceptively titled “Why Haiti Matters”) last month: “we use it to lift them up.”[3]

These are core (and preposterous [4]) suppositions that American “mainstream” journalists and pundits who wish to keep their jobs know not to challenge in any fundamental way. Efforts to move media personnel off the premise of American “goodness” are generally futile, consistent with Upton Sinclair’s observation that “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

The Financial Coup d’Etat. By David DeGraw

Via: Amped Status.

The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the United States of America

This is the fourth-part of a six-part report. Part one can be viewed here, part two here, three here. Part five will be posted Tuesday. To be notified via email, subscribe to our newsletter here.

• I: Casualties of Economic Terrorism, Surveying the Damage

• II: The Rise of the Economic Elite

• III: Exposing Our Enemy – Meet the Economic Elite

• IV: The Financial Coup d’Etat

• V: Overcoming the Divide and Conquer Strategy

• VI: How to Fight Back and Win: Common Ground Issues That Must Be Won

IV: The Financial Coup d’Etat

Although most of the Economic Elite live and operate inside the US, they are not concerned for our future. To them, the entire world is theirs and they work intimately with other elites throughout the world against the interests of the US public. Ever since the days of Henry Ford, the Economic Elite have needed a thriving US middle class to increase growth and profits, but now, in the global economy, they view the US middle class as obsolete. They increasingly look globally for profits and they would rather pay cheap labor in countries like China and India. On top of the millions of jobs they have already shipped overseas to increase profits at our expense, they are planning to ship an additional 25 percent of current US jobs overseas as well.

They now see us as the biggest obstacle to their continued consolidation of wealth and resources. This is why they have stepped up their attack on us.

If you want further proof of this, all one needs to do is study the Wall Street bailout. The entire bailout is strategically designed to eliminate the US middle class. Every time you hear the word “bailout,” you should think “coup d’état.” Here is the definition of coup d’état:

“A coup d’état or coup for short, is the sudden unconstitutional deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment… to replace the deposed government with another…. A coup d’état succeeds when the usurpers establish their legitimacy if the attacked government fail to thwart them, by allowing their (strategic, tactical, political) consolidation and then receiving the deposed government’s surrender; or the acquiescence of the populace and the non-participant military forces.

Typically, a coup d’état uses the extant government’s power to assume political control of the country. In Coup d’État: A Practical Handbook, military historian Edward Luttwak says: ‘A coup consists of the infiltration of a small, but critical, segment of the state apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control of the remainder’, thus, armed force (either military or paramilitary) is not a defining feature of a coup d’état.”

The bailout was a financial coup, an intelligence operation to seize control of the US economy and tax system. It is similar to what the Economic Elite have done through the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in many other countries throughout the world. It is clearly a case of economic imperialism. When financial coups are carried out in other countries, they call it a Structural Adjustment Program (SAP). The end result is the theft of working class wealth, the privatization of public functions and resources, rising unemployment, the elimination of the middle class and increasing taxation and debt that turns the overwhelming majority of the nation into a peasant class. This is exactly the track we are on now.

Just look at how they have already done this in many other countries, and then look at the “bailout.”

The success of the coup is clear by the control of the US Treasury by Goldman Sachs criminal masterminds Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner, and the continued control of the Federal Reserve by Ben Bernanke.

Read more at Amped Status

‘Dead Aid’: A critical reading. By Samir Amin

Via: Pambazuka News.

Dambisa Moyo was no doubt an excellent student. Unfortunately, she is a product of the conventional economics curriculum, which is great if one is to embark on a career at the World Bank, or Goldman Sachs. She attempts a radical critique of ‘aid’ but sadly she is not up to the task, her noble intentions notwithstanding.

‘Dead Aid’ is written in the same style as World Bank ‘reports’ and is extremely boring. Moyo seems to be speaking only to her ‘peers’ (at the World Bank, or Goldman Sachs). She lends a lot of credence to a long list of ‘experts’ from the bank (Jared Diamond, Paul Collier, Dani Rodrik, Przeworski, Bill Easterly, Clemens, Hadji Michael, Reichel, Djankov, Romalho, Burnside, Dollar, Mancur Olson etc) whose works are by and large inconsequential (lacking comprehension of the real world) and at times even ridiculous. They are all very good at developing ‘models’ whose conclusions are as senseless as their original premise. She only seems to be familiar with a few blinkered development theorists, like David Landes, whose ‘revelations’ are at best trivial (he concludes, for example, that ‘aid’ tends to benefit a small elite minority). The key question – still unanswered – remains: What strategic political aim does this aid serve?

A critique of aid can only be conducted within the framework of political economy. Moyo clearly abhors this framework, which she considers to be ‘ideological’, and thus ‘non-scientific’. She seems to miss the fact that the issue is about ‘capitalist markets’ (based on the valorisation of capital), and not ‘markets’ per se. She also seems to believe firmly in ideological flights of fancy in which capital-driven growth benefits everybody (what is good for Goldman Sachs is good for everyone).

Her so-called ‘apolitical’ stance is incredibly naive. One of many examples is her reference to Lumumba as a ‘communist leader’ (p. 44 in the French edition). This may be believable, but only to the average television-dulled citizen of the US. An African with even the most fleeting interest in the history of liberation struggles on the continent would balk at this.

The Battle Of Ideas, Part 1; Private Property vs. The Commons. By Tom Stephens

Via: Counter Currents.

(in memory of Howard Zinn)

“It is a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural, cultivated state, was, and ever would have continued to be, the COMMON PROPERTY OF THE HUMAN RACE. … neither did the Creator of the earth open a land-office, from whence the first title-deeds should issue. … The present state of civilization is as odious as it is unjust… It is absolutely the opposite of what it should be and it is necessary that a revolution should be made in it… The contrast of affluence and wretchedness, continually meeting and offending the eye, is like dead and living bodies chained together…”

- Tom Paine, “Agrarian Justice” (1797)

“Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation and I care not who makes its laws.”

- Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812), founder of the Rothschild banking dynasty

“At bottom, the Court’s opinion is a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.”

– Justice John Paul Stevens, Dissenting in Citizens United v FEC (January 2010)

The last year and a half came in like a tsunami. A series of fear-numbing aftershocks, or nightmares, continues to inflame what passes for public life. Several things now haunting the millennium’s second decade became very clear, in the few weeks between the collapse of the venerable Lehman Bros. investment firm in mid-September 2008, and Congress’ passage of the “Emergency Economic Stabilization” Wall Street Bailout Act at the beginning of October:

• The US federal government was willing to shovel unimaginable amounts of money – $700 billion, as just a down payment on what would eventually become trillions of dollars in credits and cash – to their Wall Street puppet masters.

• They were willing to do it very fast.

• They were willing to do it even after then-Treasury Secretary, and ex-Goldman Sachs CEO, Hank Paulson requested absolute, sole and unreviewable authority over the money.

• They were willing to do it even in spite of the, shall we say, questions that Paulson’s infamous 3-page request raised about the credibility and good faith of the banksters in charge.

• At least in the short term, we couldn’t do anything about it.

• This is not good for children or other living things.

• And this is absolutely not OK. Tom Paine said it’s “as odious as it is unjust… It is absolutely the opposite of what it should be and it is necessary that a revolution should be made in it…” In modern terms, it’s the exact, balls-out, 180-degree neo-fascist opposite of OK. Like, seriously f%$#*ked up, dude.

Back then George W. Bush, inspired once again by a catastrophe on his watch in Manhattan , rediscovered his famous corporate media eloquence, or at least temporary dim coherence, for the last time as President. He solemnly pronounced “This sucker could go down.” It became painfully clear that the next couple years were gonna be one helluva time. And so it has been. The battle of ideas – and classes, sound bites, partisans and voices on all sides of the collapsing imperial society was joined.